


Mine

by Sing



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Abbie is a phoenix, Abbie is triumphant, Abbie will be happy, Abbie will be in love, Abbie will have everything, Angst, Gen, Healing, Love, Phoenix - Freeform, Realizations, Rebirth, Reflection, Romance, Second Chances, To Catch A Phoenix, Wings, You know how I roll, all the chances she missed, but there might be crying, flames, happy endings, inadvertent horror, love heals all wounds, my own type of mythology, parallel worlds, road to redemption, split selves, through time, two loves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-19 09:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 28,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7355182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sing/pseuds/Sing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We write alot about Ichabods loss---how he regrets, how he copes.</p><p>We write alot about how Abbie coped, stuck in the catacombs---how she dealt with her return from the catacombs, in canon and non canon ways.</p><p>But we don't talk about how she died not really. Not, HER, after.</p><p>Well.....</p><p>now we do.</p><p>COMPLETE</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own sleepy hollow.
> 
> Just to clarify, Abbie always keeps her soul. alluding to her "next life" she comes back as Abbie.
> 
> Leave your thoughts!

She can't quite make up her mind whether to hold him or not.

Even when she goes to him, for the last time, in the jail cell, at the archives---on their porch.

She finds it hard to tell him, it's gone.

It. The singular it, that tied, bound, kept, them. Some part of that is no longer.

It's not such a hard thing to let go--he's, not such a hard thing to let go.

She contemplates in fact if in her next lifetime, if she will run from him and all of the destruction and misery he brought her.

Though there had been joy, yes.

There had been smiles and embraces and laughter and a forced reviewing of her life and purpose since he toppled into it. She wonders if she'd have made amends with Jenny without him. If she'd have continued to shun the other men who waltzed into her life, if she might have watched the world burn, had he not come slinking out of his ill fated grave, dragging all manner of terror into her world with it.

Would she have been spared, were it not for Ichabod Crane?

She would have turned on the supernatural, she is sure. She would have carried on, as planned, eventually, she'd have found ways to repair her family.

She'd have held tighter to the men who wanted to hold her. She'd have had great love affairs. Some ending in tears maybe but that would have been alright. She'd have lived fiercely and still be living it.

She'd have stayed with Danny, before pushing him away. Before walling him out of her heart already full of a man incapable or unwilling to open his up entirely to her.

She'd have loved more. Fully. In ways that could be _tasted, felt,_ rather than remembered, meandered, imagined---like a passing gaze or an embrace hot on the heels of fear.

Did he ever hold you when he was not afraid? she wonders as she leaves him on the porch.

Whisked away like a wind the moment he swept into his deep bow.

Did he ever want you when you were right there before him, or only if he felt lost? Did he cook for you, before there was no one to cook for? search for you, when you were right by his side? Did....did he ever hold your hand merely for the pleasure of it?

And were there ever embraces when you came in the door?

Were there ever remarks on your hair, or your smile.

Or were they always hidden and tucked away, little parcels that he would never share, until at last on your own doorstep in your final moments still he is unable to utter even a word of love in parting.......not a word.

He does not fret himself with asking where will you go, Abbie. He does not ask what happens to you, your soul, your heart, all that you are.

Abbie, he did not even ask of your body, so that he may bury it properly, to your wishes. No, what he asks, what concerns him is how will _he_  survive.

How will _he_  carry on?

What about _me_ , Crane. She wants to ask, almost does, but bites her tongue instead. What is there in the world for him without you---it's sweet, really, surface.

For he does not beg to join you.

He asks, but once, he flimsily implores you come back. As if what you've done, your sacrifice, your bravery is an easy, simple, retractable thing.

Something you can erase.

Well there is nothing light in dying, Ichabod Crane. You of all people should know that.

There is nothing, flight of fancy, in what I have done.

You cannot _undo_ , this.

You cannot undo waking from the grave anymore than I could help wanting to save the world---a world that had never been kind to me mind you but you saw fit to give me cause to save it.

And then.....and then what, Crane.

Now, now, I get to watch you, sniffing my pillow cases.

Holding my camisole, my God Crane, I shared the roof with you and you could have held the body that wears it, felt the skin and curves of what it barely concealed but here you cling to this fabric. This **scrap**.

Is that all you wanted from me Crane?

Never the All of me.

Never the soul and core and Earth of me,

but a crumb?

Is that why you withheld?

Because with me you might plant roots, you might grow still you would feel too deep tell me why should your grief mean anything to me now----

 _ **I**_ will grieve me, because you can't do it right.

You don't understand the depth of what I was, had, could have been before you. Without you. How you changed everything. Changed me.

You can't mourn my loss---you don't understand my loss, the loss you gave me if only you were braver---

**_WHY DIDN'T YOU CAST YOURSELF IN THE BOX WITH ME_ **

When that.... _power_ ,

when it snaked out.....Crane......and curled around me.....twined around me......

 _ **embraced**_ me.....like you never did on your own......how-how could I _help_?.......Crane--

How could I help but feel its want of me?

The _box_ wanted me more than you did.

The box saw something vital in me,

was greedy for me, hungry for me, _desperate_ , it wanted, needed and craved me more than you.

..........

What, what choice......

what choice did I have, but to go to it?

To feel it claim me as its own?

How could I turn that away?

It wasn't painful, dying.

It felt like nothing.

I was gone, when the explosion came. And I'd been watching you run about, oscillating between bitter anger and tenderness as you scrambled.

And then I came to you, to part.

And words were said.

A hand was kissed.

And held to your cheek.

And still all I can remember is that Box's tendril had been warmer and beckoning than you had been then.

It was not so hard, to go.

To leave you.

You vow to find me, Ichabod Crane.

I advise you look hard. Look deep.

I don't plan to make it easy for you.

I don't plan on being found.

I don't plan on being the selfless giving woman you knew---the moment I became her seemed to be a day I was destined to loose my life, and my heart.

Do not look for her,

This next life,

with or without you,

world or no

Damn it

I will be kissed

I will be touched

I will be brave I will be fiery, sweet, strong hard and soft.

I will live.

This,

next,

 _ **life**_ ,

 

is _mine_. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's not going to make it easy.

She takes a lot of time before going back.

Presses replay on the movie of her life while she prepares; rebuilding, crafting her body for the next leg of the journey.

She irons out the creases in her forehead, developed out of stress and hard living.

Presses out, and erases the scars of her fights.

Yes, she thinks wistfully as she works, her scars, her trials, have made her stronger and she is proud of them, will always carry them, they are evidence of a life lived.

But this will be a new life. And she looks forward to marking up this body with a new path.

Walking differently, hurting differently, loving, living, all of it new. More dire. She  tucks a flame in a cavity just behind her heart, with feathers around it. 

She will burn and take flight at will.

In her heart itself, she nestles a stone.

Not a _big_ one.

It still leaves room for her to feel and fully and deeply, but it rests on the place that contains the Bond. It holds it down. 

When the stone cracks--- _then_ \---only then will he be worthy of her. Only then will she let the Bond take up full residence within in her once more.

August and Joe watch her work, and she half expects them to admonish her for these measures. 

But they only watch, with calculated interest. Sometimes she thinks she catches them smiling a little spitefully at how she arms herself to give Crane torment when she returns. 

For they understand.

She will fight on her own,  when she returns. For a while, she expects. She will save the world on her terms. 

Better than always being tethered to him like mammals for the Ark. Better than them always going  _two by two._

After all, he hadn't gone  _two by two_ with her into oblivion, had he. 

No he had not.

She takes her time, humming as she envisions  her new life. Decides to leave her brain and memories in tact, she does not entirely wish to forget everything she was before. 

But she tears out the strands of fondness for Crane. 

Leaves behind the black veins of hurt instead. 

If the Bond is so strong, if  _he,_ is strong enough, he will be able to override the dark thoughts she leaves behind of him. 

She tears out his smile and donut holes and the way he used to say 'leftenant' and the fleeting comfort of his arms.

She leaves, elongates and drapes her mind with his abandonment, with his cowardice, with his flighty courting of lesser women who were never his match--she's not even his match anymore she realizes with pride, she has always been beyond him.

Always. 

She hangs these shadowy things like party streamers. 

She will remember these foremost. 

Let him fight his way through that. 

She leaves behind the distrust and skepticism. 

She plucks out her reluctance and fear of the unknown---they made her too willing a prey the last time to join in this twin mission.

She will be prepared for it when Tribulation comes to her door.

And,

she smiles as she sews herself up, smooths away the scar that vanishes, turns and lays herself down into her familiar, fortified, beloved and beautiful body. 

And she laughs as her soul fills it out, feels the little burning ember of the flame with which she will consume herself.

The tickle of the feathers that will give her flight.

The comforting weight of the stone that weighs down the Bond, makes it cold.

She  _laughs_

For Abbie has herself become the singular next Tribulation of Ichabod Crane. 

He will have to _try_ ,

to  _catch,_

a 

_Phoenix_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> continue this?


	3. Chapter 3

Her defiance is Loud.

The Universe, the Heavens, the Earth, the Below, cannot help but take notice.

The Angels who have only ever spoken to deliver the words and messages of the Divine, whose voices are meant for harmony, who do no understand nor know how to utter a word contrary to good will and glory cock their heads, and in their sonorous voices declare she's "Snapped"

The Devils and Imps of Hell, who know and crave only destruction, violence and all things that are ugly and borne of rot and wickedness, who know nothing of kind words, of good, of saying anything beautiful, rouse their master and Lucifer looks up, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. And in their raspy roars and through the clatter fangs and claws they declare she's "Radiant"

All stood aside watched as she meandered by the banks in Heaven, finding the perfect smooth stone. 

Listened to her daintily snipping out happy memories of her former fellow witness. 

They all moan sadly to find there is not such a great pile of happy things to discard. 

Captivated as she stole the little embers of Holy Fire, and a bit of the one from Hell--from a besotted horned terror---and made her flame. 

The Lord watched her.

One of His beloved creatures. 

One of His destined soldiers.

Watched her embracing the whole of her spirit.

All good and wicked of the earth are enraptured by this next, unprecedented turn. They have never heard of such a thing. 

They dare not interfere. 

For the first time in all of history, good and evil are joined as audience to this moment. 

When the Lord pets her hair and blows breath back into her body, she wakes. 

In awe, the world, the universe, Angels and Demons, Lord and Satan, watch. 

* * *

 

She follows him to Washington.

Well.

She haunts, him in Washington. She walks paces behind him and winks out of view when he turns.

She listens in on the ridiculous goose chase of finding the next person who has "inherited her soul" she stifles the insane laugh that tries to escape her at the notion.

Imagine that her soul could ever belong to anyone else but her.

She watches him, curiously, as he takes orders and researches, and sometimes falters when some.....thing, triggers a memory of her. He gets a momentary far away look in his eye.

He does not cry, though.

She hates him for that.  

It is not a hard thing to let the dislike roil in her.

It's something of a freedom.

At last she can feel the anger she has long tempered. She can be wild and unruly and ill mannered.

It's a strange liberation to see his flaws without an ounce of guilt for it.

A stranger one still to notice her own. They are clearer to her now.

She was too hard, too tight, too, clenched up around the world being just so.

Now she is limber loose free.

And even as she tastes the bitterness of his ill done mourning on her tongue, she spreads her wings.

She goes home.

Her upset of the world, of balance is such a chaos, it is not hard, for her bid on the house, _her house_ that he had dared to sell.

As if he had toiled and dreamed to pay for it.

No, he had squatted in the den of her dreams, blood,sweat, triumphant pasts and relinquished futures, and because, oh, the memory, of her in the kitchen or coming in from a run had been so great.

Oh, dear, poor thing, she tuts.

Those little things had caused such _grief_. He listed the property. 

Well. He'll be glad to know it's been sold.

She meanders outside the small, small house he occupies now. Hovers in his window.

The first time he sees her he startles, blinking wild eyed and runs outside to find thin air.

Inside, where she has escaped to nimbly she digs through his things to retrieve some tokens that were never his to keep.

Grace's Journal, for one.

And a small gift, that had been a great point of contention between them once.

She goes back home, and decorates.

She is beholden to so many less boundaries than before.

She does not keep the paint, nor the plants nor furniture.

She coughs gently and spits up little embers, blows on them and they dance and whirl descending on the chair he once sat in. The chess set they used to play on.

The embers catch the succulents.

Everything ignites.

She wedges a finger nail under the seam of her door frame, prying off a chip of paint. Another, another, until she is tearing swathes of colour from the wall.

All of this normal, tame domesticity.

All of the normal, contained, dreams she had once.

Of a nice, normal, warm, home. Safe, comfy, cozy.

Safe comfy cozy tastes like flour and ash.

She wants bitter and sweet, now. 

The full range,

The spectrum

She starved herself before.

She is greedy this time around.

* * *

Next door, the neighbours clamour and quake.

The house down the street, they whisper, where that woman died and the man left, it's, shaking. 

It's, shuddering and changing.

They can hear laughter. 

Chaotic, wild, triumphant laughter. 

And then the door opens, 

and they see her

and they are struck dumb by the revelation, the miracle of her there.

The Universe smoothes her way.

 


	4. Chapter 4

She's pleasantly surprised, which is odd, to find she has a visitor at the end of her first week back. 

First of which being this is a foe.

But on _whose_ terms, she wonders fleetingly as she leans on her door frame.

The streets are a calm quiet, adjusting to this disruption of order.

It won't last she knows, 

the air thrums with excitement. 

There's a wildness to the world now, even in the Earth--a tremor of rebellion---there's a rather stubborn green tendril poking through her wall, that wants direly to bloom in her kitchen. 

"No you don't." she coos as she snips it. It whimpers and she frowns. "If I let you in others will come and I'll be living in a garden. Behave yourself."

Another whimper before it wilts--all for show.

It's as stubborn as she is and will try again tomorrow.

Just like the leak in her roof that seems bent on the notion of creating a pond in her living room--by passes her second floor entirely---when it rains--twice, this week. 

She dries it out, a small effort--she's delightfully surprised that her flame and feathers are not meant solely for her combustion and flight.

They're just,  _there._

_Her home is nothing she has ever known before._

It's airy, breathable, and not laden with sensible things. It's ungoverned, and there are no expectations here. She's at leisure. 

Even with the blanket of change that has descended on her home town--a Divine Declaration that she has returned and there is nothing more to it--she does not look forward to returning to her desk. Not yet. 

If ever.

Free floating before coming back, one thing.

Living walking freedom is quite another.

There's a dangerous possibility she will become drunk on it. 

But, for all of this--she hadn't expected, "Those look new," she nods at the great expanse of feathers spread out behind her visitors back. She leans out her door and checks the street. "I didn't call you," she purrs as she closes the door behind him.

Folding them in with a sharp, elegant snap, careful enough not to shed on her polished floors he turns to face her. "I had to come to see it myself." 

"Before or after you tried to purge the world?" she asks calmly, sweetly. 

She doesn't fear him.

She might have, the first time, when he was unpredictable, she had been wary. 

But that.....she's calculating and knows the risks now, but there is no fear.

She's unique, new,  she is NeverBefore now and she wagers that counts for something. 

Or he wouldn't have come to call, uninvited. 

"The Heavens sing you have parted ways with Nature. The Underworld cheers the same." 

"Do they rejoice or fear," she drawls, picking at her nails.

"They query if perhaps the line has blurred of your sense of duty."

"Duty." she scoffs and she doesn't miss the way he smirks at it. "Duty did me a lot of good in the end, didn't it?"

"Prophecy---"

"Prophecy is a promise someone else made without asking if I agree," she hisses. "Prophecy is a cage made of vowing words that melt like butter when the fires too  _hot"_ tapping her finger gently on his shoulder blade and he hisses at the feeling of fire catching one of his wings, even folded in his skin. 

She blows on the spot quickly though.

She is pointed and daring but not wicked nor malicious. 

"You are most changed."

"And yet not. Everything I never let myself be before but wanted to. Do you..." she gestures vaguely at his own form that breaks the barriers of understanding--an Angel in her living room? 

Never mind he's a Fallen the man has wings. 

So does she, but that's another matter.

"....coffee? water? I'm being a bad host," she jokes.

"Nectar," he answers with a challenging glint in his eye. "Do you have any?"

"I mean if you'd like a flower to suck on there's a vine in my kitchen that would be happy to oblige."

He laughs.

It's a jarring bewildering thing to hear an Angel laugh.

It actually disturbs the air. 

His laugh is a breeze wafting through her home, through her.

She feels the little feathers in their cavity flutter with it.

It tickles and she coughs.

"I should like to stay." he announces. Abbie backs up, raises a brow.

"Excuse me?"

"They tell of it here, you wish to Try him."

"Try?"

"You'll be having many visitors, Abigail Mills. They are all curious of your journey. They all want to take part."

"In what."

"Destroying the world, saving it, they'll fight you too--do not think them friends, nor I, for that matter" he points out. "They look forward to seeing if this Split will at last be your downfall. Or if there was only ever cause for one of you after all."

"They're looking forward to watching me fail." she says, anger lighting quickly through her.

"Not necessarily. Though even the most vile foes find the same adversary over and over tedious.....and I do not believe I am alone in saying we're all less than fond of your....other half." 

"Other half?" she balks. "Do you see something incomplete here?" she asks, turning before him and his eyes are glittering so bright it's eerie. 

Pride.

He's proud of her. 

"I am a whole. No dual parts. No puzzle pieces. No  _halves._ " 

Orion grins "Is it true,"

"What?"

"You can burst into flame?"

"Not something I test drive for the fun of it." she quips. "Why?"

"As a mortal you intrigued and now you fascinate. I find more value in this world every minute."

"Orion."

"Abigail Mills."

"You're not staying here. But it was kind of you to....stop by."

"You will see more of me, if you do not mind."

"I'll combust if you bore me." she retorts. "Then you'll know if it's true."

She watches him spreading his wings and leaping up into the sky, becoming a dark vanishing pinprick.

She begins to retreat--she hasn't even done her stretching for the day yet--- when there's another knock at the door. 

And she wonders who it could be.


	5. Chapter 5

Change tells in the seasons.

When birds take flight.

When skies cloud over.

When flowers wither or bloom.

When temperatures plummet.

When lightening strikes down mighty wise old trees that careen, without preamble through your roof.

And you stagger out of your assaulted haven--what little semblance of home you have managed to cobble together and you are struck by the static stillness of the air.

The feel of change on the tide.

You feel it before you see it. Before you understand it, wheedles somewhere into your lungs and makes you take a breath too deep----

inhaling all of the nuance and change, as if hoping should you suck it all in, soak it all up that the change, the transformation will become you and it will be an easier thing to stand.

That you will whether the weather, as it were.

This, the fragmented strain of thought Crane clings to when he looks back on his house, so deftly crushed, right through the living room by the grand old tree.

He laughs dementedly for a moment.

Of course a tree would fall through the roof he only just started to feel at home in of course he should lose something else again, and this is right.

This is warranted and earned.

He should have been worried if the world allowed him for a moment to contemplate forgetting the sense of loss.

He watches in dumb rapt fascination as the limbs, crackle and burn.

Stands idly by while it becomes ruin. The rain that accompanies it tries, half heartedly do douse the flame.

He sinks to the ground and watches.

A familiar instinct.

Native.

Numb.

What is the house and a place to rest his head when it is nothing it should have been?

The rock is more welcoming than creature comforts.

The bed, which he imagines is burning properly now, would cruelly invite him to dream.

And only one dream every featured at the theatre of his mind.

Vanishing wisp of a woman---never to be seen again.

The knowledge that no shackles held him.

No foe had detained him.

Rocked to his knees and had looked on, watching as all he knew, all that had worth---went, with the smallest glance of uncertainty never to be seen again.

The way he looks on at his house burning. 

He wonders where to go.

The sister is no safe place. 

Her grieving rages border on life threatening. Twin sorrows wage war in her heart, battling to see which can cut the deepest. 

She's tenuously sewn together by determined threads of perseverance. They unravel though, and he does not entrust his addled and distracted existence to the unpredictable violence that visits her at any given moment.

They have argued, loud and long hours since burial.

His time in Washington should have been time enough to cool heads but she is bitter with him still.

He has no energy to defend himself.

What is his defence?

What is penalty of cowardice?

It should be death.

He fails however to muster the will to do it himself.

And the snivelling wretch of him has developed a fear of ceasing.

Of being stopped. Halted. Stilled.

The rain came and stopped as quickly as it had begun, his home a tidy shambles in minutes.

Neat, efficient work. He would congratulate their productivity.

He does not miss the house. Though he knows he'll have to find some way to repair it--

she lingered even there.

He saw her in the window recently.

Gone, before he could go out the door.

It's nothing _new_.

He's been seeing her when his eyes close and people jog, he even heard her tapping footsteps behind him in washington.

He visited the grave, just yesterday, and was disturbed to find the  head stone had been torn out of the Earth.

He'd found the head stone in his bed when he'd arrived home, smashed viciously down the middle, splintering into great, heavy uneven chunks. 

He slept, quite literally with his grief. 

He'd awoken to her full name scrawled on the smallest, nearest piece to him. Pocketed that.

Only moments later is when the tree will render him homeless.

And he takes a deep breath as he gets to his feet, tries to absorb this change, soak it in, become it, move with it. 

Out of ideas. He wonders vainly if the house might still be vacant. 

* * *

 

Impossible.

Just last week it was empty.

_For Sale_

How dare they---who has dared to think of calling this place a happy home?

He shouldn't have listed it if he didn't want the house getting company---but he couldn't bare it.

He knows the listlessness of dwelling in it solo once before.

To continue on knowing the permanence of that solitude threatened his sanity.

He'd have been happier had it remained abandoned. Crumbling to the ground in due time.

The irrational anger he feels is so great he marches to the door, poised to knock.

When the door opens, his wicked brain tricks him with the image of her before him, whole, beautiful, aloof.

A far away look.

* * *

She knows on who she looks upon, but is shocked at how thorough she had been severing their ties.

The amount of nothing that she feels.

It's bizarre.

The bad memories, the ones of betrayal sway gently in her mind, gentle reminders of the ill things he brings, and she is dimly aware that the halls behind her begin to bedeck themselves with black twirling streamers--sensing her train of thought.

But she is tempered, cool.

 _Him_ she expected. 

She studies the haunted bewildered look on his face, the moment when hazy disbelief--she can see him weighing logic, his own sense of sanity and clarity--begins shifting, clearing into understanding, reality.

Awakened.

"Left--"

No,

She thinks calmly, a little vengefully as the heat creeps through her.

She feels badly for Orion that he won't witness her first attempt at this.

No, You should wait a while longer, she thinks, holding still as his arms reach for her, and then---

* * *

Ash.

On his finger tips.

In his mouth.

In his eyes.

He screams for it burns.

He chokes for the bitterness of it.

It engulfs him and he crashes to the floor on his knees, gasping in the soot black remains. 

Grey and black little flecks, all over the threshold, hanging in the air. 

There and then not.

Like the Tree.

Like the Box.

Like the leap through Time to save your life.

Before your eyes Crane, she was gone. 

* * *

A pretty bird, foreign, majestic in its plumage shrugs and shifts in its body, makes the short flight to the back door  and catches a glimpse of another set of wings, larger, grander, rustling in the neighbours tree.

Well he didn't go very far. Guess he didn't miss it after all, the bird thinks, folding in her wings before stepping back out, one foot then the other on the grass. She glances down. 

Oh, so the clothes don't return with you. She nods, that's good to know. 

She'll have to find a way around that. 

It'll be inconvenient come winter.

She watches through the back door window at him struggling until the dark cloud clears---his widened eyes and the terror as he turns, and  _runs_ from the house.

Well, good to know you remain true to form, she thinks as she lets herself in. 

"Orion," she calls without looking back. "Follow him. Tell me where he goes." 

There is no answer but the rustle of leaves, and the swoop of wings through the air. 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

Vials of poison.

And the barrel of a gun.

Are a more welcoming sight, then the storm cloud arched brows of Jennifer Mills.

She tugs nervously on her strings, the ones lacing up her chest to keep her from falling apart from her battling sorrows---a boon gone wrong from a tricky fae with a mean streak that they'd encountered, not long after she'd suffered the two greatest losses she'd ever known.

She'd felt herself splitting in two, and in a malicious fit the fae had done exactly that in its attack.

Had played twisted king Solomon and had cut her down the middle.

She had become instead two separate grieving versions of Jenny Mills. One that wept day and night wailing for Joe. Another who's grief was angry and violence ridden, made her roar like a feral thing. Wracked her with guilt for the years she'd thought Abbie had abandoned her, for the grudge she'd held.

Every disagreement they'd ever had seemed petty now.

She knows deep down that only because she'd made Abbie feel pain so deep that her sister would go to the greatest lengths again and again, trying to make it right, to prove she loved her.

She can't remember if she thanked her.

SHE CAN'T REMEMBER IF SHE THANKED HER.

The first?

The second?

It had been a distracting and terrifying existence. Two versions of her careening into the other in the cabin---she'd actually fought with herself there, sharing too close quarters with emotions running so rampant and wild and deep and hurting.She has scratches still, claw marks from a fight with her other self. 

It had been up to her father and Crane to trap the fae who'd cursed her. Who'd given her this makeshift fix instead, claiming that Crane's attack---she never bothered asking what convenient stupid confounding founding father relic it was that just  _happened_ to come in handy this time---she didn't care---had weakened it to the point of being crippled. 

Had given her what it called a soul suture instead, tying her warring halves back together. And for the most part it worked. Her pains seemed to have reached a tentative truce. Though sometimes she feels them straining against the lacings criss crossing down her chest. It's best if she doesn't get herself riled up. Doesn't excite them.

It's why she took the trailer to the mountains. 

Why she chases Crane away with anger. 

Because she is still furious with him, yes. Because her sister had known more solemn solitude than she. Because her sister had carried around the ghost of mama, and the spectre of the sister she betrayed for years and had never let anyone in---until Crane.

And the least he could have done was go with her. Keep her company. Walk whatever shadowy road that the dead walk. Keep them on the right path, wading through the valley of death. 

At the very least, the only thing Crane had to do, was die.

Which isn't so hard to do.

Look, Abbie did it, she didn't even take how to die 101.

She just knew how to be a hero.

 _All you had to do was die, Crane. That was the least you could have done._  

She'd screamed that at him before  he'd left for washington. 

Now he's outside her door.

"There's a demon." he starts and she scowls more. Plucks the dangling strings--she can't help but fiddle with them, the long cords dangling from her neck. She wears a lot of blouses now to camoflauge them. Her t shirts show the lacings, literally holding her together. "There is," he rasps. 

"What's in your hair." she asks, tone flat. 

"Ash" He gasps, dusting his hair and little flakes dance and twirl off of him. She feels a sharp tug in her left---the Abbie half, as a fleck lands on her. "There is a demon impersonating your sister, haunting the house. I thought it was her returned to us, I dared to hope---and then it became ash." 

"You're hallucinating Crane."

He'd taken to experimenting with a few substances too, since she'd passed, trying to peer into the world where no mortal should walk, but without the courage to enter it. She'd despised him for it. Why try to reach her, check up on, when you should have gone? 

 _ **I should have gone**_ she thinks numbly, on more than one night. Maybe that's what angers her most---that she put something like the welfare of her sisters heart in the hands of Ichabod Crane. 

"This is not one of my 'trips'"

She scoffs and laughs bitterly.

He hadn't even been taking the fun drugs. Ones you can casually overdose on, no.

Mystical stuff. Spirit walker/talker things, she never understood it. More astral this and pulled this out of my ass that, left him in trances and stupors and her listening disdainfully next to her father, barely managing to restrain her from scratching his eyes out as he recounted what he _hadn't_ learned.

"We have to destroy it---what if its the key---" 

"There is no key. Crane" she says through tight lips, pulling her strings tight and tying them in a bow. "She's gone. We let her die. We failed her. Now leave me alone."

"Miss Jenny."

"BEFORE I HARM US BOTH" 

The door slams and Crane stands there, outside, at a loss. 

Inside she struggles to breathe and commands herself to calm down. Be cool.

Calm

Be cold.

Like ice.

Like a corpse.

* * *

 

In the house she takes stock to see if she feels any different after her first 'burning' Everything is still intact, she's still whole. She goes for clothes upstairs. 

Startles at Orion in her room. She's self conscious of her nakedness for all of half a beat before she remembers he saw her like this before she sent him away. 

For his part he seems un phased. "He went to your sister." he says, turning sharply and trailing her to her room. Stands there like a sentinel while she dresses. 

"Jenny," she says, heavily, heart feeling warm. She's been trying to work out a way to go to her. 

"She is held together like a rag doll" he kindly informs her. "She threatened to harm both herself and Ichabod Crane." he snarls. 

"What? why?"

"One can only imagine she is as irritated with him as the visitor that he has treated you so." 

"Visitor?"

"Do you not hear him?" 

Then she does. A strong stride marching through the house. 

Clothed and confused Abbie catches Orion's eye before she goes back out her room, peers down the hall and then backs up too quick in shock, right into Orion's hard chest. Her back tingles where her wings were just extended, reacting to another feathered being she supposes fleetingly, but otherwise her mouth has gone dry. 

"Miss Mills."

"Captain?"

His face softens. "Why  didn't you answer when I called? did you go for a walk?" 

Her brain misfires. What's happening here? She turns to ask Orion but there is nothing but a few feathers on the floor. 

And Abbie finds herself alone with a man she's only met once and yet has known for three years. In different eras.

Captain Ichabod Crane steps in toward her and captures her in a crushing embrace.

"I've missed you darling. Welcome home." 


	7. Chapter 7

"Captain?" she asks again.

His chest rumbles beneath her ear and he chuckles into her hair. "So formal this morning," he says, voice full of warm humour and he pulls a way smiling down at her. 

Abbie blinks trying to focus, double checking her surroundings, looking first of all for some sign of the present. For technology and ---there we are, an outlet, and yes, she has a plug in air freshner. She heaves a sigh of relief. 

She has not somehow managed to be reborn in the past.

But that does not explain why physical embodiment of the very thing is standing in her home. "Crane," she starts as he begins heading down the steps and he pauses at the top, turning to peer at her.

His hair is long, in a neat queue. But he's not wearing the navy coat she'd met him in, but instead very sensible, very business like collared shirt and pants. He frowns. "Wife, you know I prefer Ichabod at home. I hear Captain and Crane plenty from the fellows at work" he begins to smile but then calls out.

Her knees went weak on ' _Wife_ the world spinning as she started crumbling to the floor. 

But then his arms around her, warm, sure, efficient, with not a hint of hesitation and he clasps one of her hands in his own, close to his heart. 

Abbie scrunches her eyes shut and them opens then again. "Did you say wife?"

He smiles kindly at her, eyes full of so much adoration she's unsure whether her heart gallops out of exhilaration or fright. "Is that what made you weak in the knees?" he jokes, pulling her upright. "Well," he grips her chin, tilting her head upwards and he leans forward pressing a kiss to her forehead. "It is good to know I still have that effect on you, after all this time." 

And then he kisses  _her_. And something shifts in her brain.

The malice streamers. The black veins of things she had left up to remind  her of all the ill things bound up in Ichabod Crane, they sway with a breeze gusting through a light illuminating the forest of dark things and she watches as few ignite, ever so briefly in her minds eye. They shrivel back, shrieking with hurt, pulling up into whatever great tree of heartbreak they dangle from before descending again, longer, harder, like a curtain dropping. 

A snapping pain in her head and her breath catches as he  _deepens_ the kiss. 

No, that's her, somewhere inside, something...is it her feathers? They go still, the heat of her fire, she feels it gutter back. But the stone remains. 

What does it mean she wonders, then distracted because sensation demands she kiss him back. 

Strange and alien it is but, right. There is love in it. She can feel it rolling off him, how he keeps a firm hold of her before drawing away, eyes twinkling. 

"Apologies." he ducks his head, as if shy. A more bizarre thing to see strong upright Captain Ichabod Crane....shy. She does this to him. "I still find myself carried away with you." Another peck on the mouth and then he grasps her hand, leading her downstairs. "I've made brunch. And your sister is coming over."

"Jenny?"

His eyes crinkle at her as if her peculiarity this day is the most endearing thing. "Do you have another?" he asks jovially. "My but you're strange this morning. But you're  _my_ strange" He hugs her to him before pulling out a chair at the table and waits expectantly. 

The door bell rings. "Ah. That must be her, I'll get it."  and strides away with purpose toward the door. Commanding man of the house with slightly domestic tendencies. 

Abbie stares at the plate of food before her, fork  in hand, reaches instead for the glass of orange juice and halts at the bauble on her ring finger. Dazed, she touches it, tracing the edges of the diamond set in the band and her  head snaps up at the sound of Jenny's voice. 

 _"Abbie!_ " 


	8. Chapter 8

Inside the trailer she forces herself to calmdeathcool before the phone rings. 

"Hello?"

"Miss Jenny, I wanted to invite you over for brunch"

She pauses, processing. The voice, the timbre, it's confident insistence. A resemblance to Crane on whom she just slammed the door.

"Yeah I'll be right over" 

"Excellent. See you soon."

She hangs up, maybe there's a demon after all.

Brazen thing, inviting her over.

Well, Jenny would hate to be rude.

* * *

 

Outside the house looks the same. Achingly the same, how many brunches had she spent here with her sister and Crane? truthfully not nearly enough. 

She knocks on the door.

"I'll get it" she hears on the other side, she prepares herself for whatever bizarre doppleganger lies beyond but the door sweeps open on nothing.

The house is mould and motes of dusts, thick heavy layering coats of it on, grey with dank, smells of cold. Abandoned and over grown.

From ceiling dangles wispy strands, trembling in a non existant breeze, like a direly troubled weeping willow. 

But what disturbs her is she heard, felt, her own voice chime gleefully once she'd crossed the threshold. 

Like a strong gust of wind, a hand slamming into her back through her chest forcing breath from her,  _"Abbie!"_

_"Miss Jenny so good to see you"_

_"Oh you wouldn't  believe the traffic on the way over here"_

But there is no one, nothing living in this house and yet she can hear the voices, like echoes, but not far away enough, she feels as though she is walking among them, they are surrounding her. 

And then she hears the voice of hope ---a sliver, a bare shaft of light glimmering among the foggy impentratable shadows. 

" _Jenny"_ it's Abbie's voice, coming from the direction of the kitchen, voice heavy and laden with relief and gratefulness and she follows it, the narrow beam to yet another grey cast

Dead

room.

But the chatter persists and it's beginning to chafe at her skin. 

At the sound of her sisters voice she'd felt a violent lurch against her ill got binding---one side of her direly reaching out, clutching for the source of its ache but there is nothing to console her here.  _nothing_. 

"Hello" she rasps at last and the voices die.

 

* * *

"Did you hear something?" Abbie asks, gaze shifting between Captain Crane _\----her husband_ \---and the full bodied smiling Jenny before her. Both cock their heads to the side. 

"No, don't think so" Jenny answers, slinging an arm around her and marching her back to the table.  "Ooh, what did you make?"

"Pancakes is the only thing I could manage but there's enough bacon to feel plenty guilty for" he smiles and Abbie joins them at the table. 

She watches them eat but she hesitates. 

Some sort of strange has descended on her and she does not understand it. 

She is very sure, for example that this is not the Crane she left behind in a cave, but the one from 1781. And this Jenny

Wreathed smiles and sparkling eyes.

She didn't know such a version of happy on her sister honestly until Joe. 

 _"Hello? Abbie?"_ she looks over her shoulder, hearing voices--no, Jenny's, but Jenny is sitting across from her at the table.

"Abbie?" Jenny bursts into her thoughts. 

"Hmm?"

"I asked if there's been....any changes"

 

"Changes" she states, wary what Jenny alludes to.

Do they know what she is? Is this a secret she will have to keep or do they embrace her here? 

 

"If you mean whether or not Abbie is in the family way---no, Jennifer" Ichabod chuckles. "At least if so she hasn't bothered to tell me!"

She chokes on her mouthful. 

A strange desire comes over her then, like a reminder, it weaves through her being then, that yes, she means to take a pregnancy test. 

They've been trying for the past four months and they are so eager to start a family.

These thoughts.

 

Alien-- **intruding** \-- half of her brain knows---snuggle down into her consciousness.

A craving for motherhood wells up like a small tide in her heart, setting her stone gently a float before it settles back down, pinning the Bond back in place. 

 

"Rest assured Jenny their aunt would be the first to know." she laughs, her fingers twine with his beneath the table and she turns her face toward him to smile, and it's easy, liberating and right and there is a stillness within her. 

 

She feels it more keenly than moments before. 

A peace. 

 

 

Things taking root, a heavy curtain being drawn closed.

There's a shout.

 

" _COME OUT NOW DEMON AND FIGHT ME"_

it jars her out of the moment and the others sense the disturbance of the air. He tuts thoughtfully as he places two more strips of bacon on her plate and then his. "I wonder if something's fallen in the chimney," 

 

* * *

 

 

_"Like what, a bird?"_

_"Who knows Miss Jenny who knows"_  

the voice grumbles and Jenny staggers as she feels something, someone storm through her on route to the living room. She falls to her knees, finds her fingers, pants, mouth full of dust, ash, things that choke, and taste----

of old Time.

Things past forgotten

Dead.

She tastes each second gone like a small death on her tongue. 

A forever stretching into nothing. 

 _"I didn't see anything"_ another winding impact crosses her back the way it came. 

 _"It was probably nothing"_ Abbie's voice again. 

She scoops up handfuls of the debris, searching, digging for the hard wood floors of this house left in decay and is dismayed when the floor boards beneath punch clean through with rot. 

The hanging tendrils sway around her, making her cold and she rises to her feet at last, haunted by the cheer that dares live in this dead air space, and goes slowly out of the house.

Head heavy as if stuffed with cotton.

* * *

Familiarity and strange battle for pride of place that night, where she takes in the sight of his body stretched out on the bed, boxers and no shirt, reading casually and upon her entry sets aside the book he is calmly perusing and looks  up at her, a clear invitation glitters in them.

_A baby._

warmth and fear flood through her. This is what they are working towards. She knows it. 

Accepts it--some part of Abbie is _here_  

living

 _ **here**_.

Is home, born raised, in this corner of her life, but somewhere within her tells her it doesn't last.

She approaches the bed and he reaches for her hand.

Acute terror lances through her.

Disgust, wounded feelings coil around her brain and heart.

Her bitter forest kindly interjects even here---do not let this man so close. Remember who he has been, what he was. 

A _coward_.

A runner.

A fool who never understood your worth. They insist. 

Hands that caressed craggy pages and the books of spines rather than your smooth hands. 

Lips ruminating on ancient incantations instead of running across your skin----

Eyes that watched and limbs that held still as you gave and gave and gave and---

She hesitates at the beds edge. He looks at her with his head cocked. 

"You are really out of sorts today aren't you, come here." and stretches out his arms.

He doesn't mean it.

He only holds you when he is afraid.

Clutches you for security. To steady him. 

But it is  _she_ who is afraid at this moment. 

She had revelled in so much glory seeing his pain when she'd tried out her flame for the first time.

But she is disoriented by this new course of life she has regenerated into---it feels too right, too safe to be true.

"Come, Abbie." he intones, sitting up, stretching further until her hand is in his and he pulls her towards him to sit on the edge, he curls around her and leans them back, turning into his side, clutches his hand. He strokes her hair carefully. "Darling." a kiss to her crown. "Darling I want you to know that whatever is wrong, you can tell me. I'm here for you. Always." 

What a sad thing it is,

amidst this backdrop of love and all things contrary she finds herself so heavily adorned with a fear she had never known in her own unbelievable world.

The want of it.

She _wants_ this life.

It fits, so well tailored, hugs her curves and cinches right and made of the finest silk---this life is the luxe fine spun thing,

that she wants to wear until she dies--even though that concept of death is irrelevant to her now.

The desire to stay here is so strong so great---

_puff  
_

There, just there.

She gasps with the shock of it and what it means.

Belated horror holds a knife to her throat.

The flame just went out.

HolyHellfire,

Doused.

"Abbie?" he wraps his arms around her tighter, brow wrinkled in concern when she starts to shiver. He draws the blankets up over them. "I'm here." lips press to her forehead.He is so warm and smells of musk, she is touching his bare skin and he is not shying away---this alone is laden with an implicit intimacy. "I'm here" a thumb stroking gently back and forth in comfort. 

 _ **So am I**_  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well.....hazard a guess where this is going? 
> 
> I'll have to check up on Crane soon won't I.....


	9. Chapter 9

Abbie wakes up to Orion looming over the bed. She starts, glancing across the bed only to find his half empty. She remembers the warmth she'd found sleeping beside him, his breath rustling the her hair. 

Now, she recalls a kiss dropped on her nose then mouth before he left. 

"Take your time today Abbie. Just take your time." 

to what she'd wanted to ask in her half asleep stupor

to acclimate?

To you being too solid and real to be this graceful and tender with me?

She'd said something mundane instead. "Have a good day, sweetheart." 

Now she draws the covers around her and glares. "What are you doing here," she hisses.

He makes an odd shrugging motion of his shoulders, as if uncomfortable. "I do not like but I do not have just cause as to why."

"Who"

"Who more than your husband. How do you find him?"

"He's.....almost nothing like my Crane."

 _My is a word of ownership_ a voice taunts.  _Be wary of the things you claim._

"But it is him, isn't it. Some version. Are you happy?"

"It's been a day. I don't understand how I would up here."

Orion sneers. "Neither angel nor imp cared to tell you? A phoenix does not just burn and return. It lives for millienia before shedding its old form and building fresh from its remains. It's cyclic. It watches the world come and go, turn after turn it watches history repeat itself. You are not in a dream world, Abigail Mills. This is very real. And you will be here until you burn out." he regards her when her face  blanches.

"My fire went out." she says. "My feathers are still."

"You have found home here. Just like the Phoenix that chooses to linger and view in a rotation before starting anew."

"You didn't say anything--"

"No one did. A human has never been so bold before. It's mesmerizing, what you've done."

"Are you telling me, that I'm living, what, a life time ahead?"

"time is swift and slow for you. Infinite and incomplete, for you surpass it. It is more like one world has been laid over another. There are layers." 

"So out there, somewhere, Crane---"

"The one you left behind, yes, you may find him out there." his eyes flash. "You set out your challenge well, Abigail. How will Crane find you, not across life times, but in the middle of myriad ones?" 

Abbie is thinking too fast to make sense of Orion's cryptic words. "So I can't leave here."

"You are in charge of the domain of your form. Your flame died because you wished it to. You might stay here forever, enjoy a lifetime here. But it'll need kindling---a signal that it's time you go, that you are ready to transcend here, before it flickers back to life." 

"I...."

"All of the lives, the infinite worlds are yours Abigail. And you  are free to enjoy them. To see and feel beyond your dreams. You wanted here. It's why you've nested. Enjoy what this has to offer."

"Why are you supporting this, you hate Crane. All versions of him."

"I am without boundaries or limits. In infinity, there will still be you and me, Abigail." too quickly, he is on the bed, hovering over her, one hand on the bed beside her, the other grasping the headboard near her head, effectively caged in while he leans in close, nose to nose, his wings folding around them, cloaking them in downy quiet. 

"There will still be you  _and me_."


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst and Jenny and Crane and Abbie in her new life.
> 
> To clarify, Captain Crane in this new life is NOT a demon and Abbie is NOT dreaming.

Finding no refuge he returned to the remains, the broken scorched bones of his home. 

Sits on his new burly, thick trunked tenant. 

A crunch of dirt is all it takes to announce her arrival. He wraps a hand around the piece of gravestone in his pocket. 

For comfort, for safety.

He only ever remembers to hold her, to cherish, when the risk is grave and dire. 

He loves her best when she is not his to keep. 

"There's something at that house but I can't tell you what." Jenny coughs, clearing her lungs from whatever cloying thing had seized her while there. "it's dilapidated."

A puzzled frown. "Surely you are mistaken---"

"Punched right through the floor Crane. It's over grown, some sort of plant has over run the place. Looks like no one has been there, ten, maybe hundreds of years."

"That's impossible, I was there--"

" _This_ should be impossible." She snarls, tearing down the collar of shirt and Crane flinches away from her. "Look at me and see what impossible is---this from a man who is the freaking definition of it.  _Look at me_ " 

He looks.

In and out the string weaves, through skin and tissue and into the other, back and forth and back and forth, there is a disconcerting gap every now and again when she breathes in which he can see red pulsing behind it. He turns abruptly and fights the urge to void his stomach on the ground. 

" _You of all people know there is no such thing, as **impossible.**  Your existence, your awakening into  life to give Abbie and subsequently  **myself** torment is evidence to the absolute contrary. And You of all the possibilities and ways and loop holes and **screw**  you Crane---who knows how to run and save your hide---you deemed saving my sister  **impossible** "_

Dread courses through him, they have been down this road before and it does not end in kind places.

There is enchantment still in what holds her together and he eyes her strings---longer now, swaying, wildly in the air where there is no breeze, as if they would---

An aborted scream is all that escapes him before they lash out at him, pulling him towards her holding him inches from her face. "All of your vows and promises and no follow through. Do you feel this?" they tighten around him. "The way they squeeze and constrict? I  _live_ like this. Joe's loss I might have carried but you gave me the gift of Abbie's too.  ** _thank you_** for that." she drops him abruptly and he backs away. Eyes glittering blue sparks. 

"Miss Jenny I---I mourn, I regret, and I am haunted by it, every single DAMNING day of my life. DO NOT THINK YOU CAN CUT ME ANY DEEPER  THAN I HAVE CUT MYSELF." 

He casts off his coat. 

Rends his clothes. 

Jenny stands back and takes him in. She has seldom if ever, seen Crane, angry. 

But his rage is simmering and his desperation itself showcases a true sign of madness.

Hurt and blackness and---Jenny has not been helping. "What have you done," she says, voice small in shock.

"Do not think I have not gone every length that I know."

* * *

Blood once, for a binding.

Fire twice, hope of igniting afire _within himself_ as a homing beacon. 

A living lantern that she might follow home, not unlike her voice that he had followed when he strayed in that dark place. 

When that had failed, a carefully approximated--he would tell himself, knick to his throat--simply calling into a void wouldn't do, so blood again, for blood makes everything stronger.

Blood is vital.

Blood is bonds.

Blood tells you how sure your aim.

How deep your cut.

And bloodbloodblood

For all the runes he cold find, etching them with tears down his face into his own skin. 

Water once, sprinkled with herbs and hushed words, submerged himself in this spirit spring. A small portal to a sea of souls. 

Hungry, malicious, had clawed at him, begged him to stay, to keep them company---cold hands of death pawing at his hands and legs, reaching and straining for his heart. 

He is bruised and black and blue in these places--touched by the dead. 

He feels the chill of their fingers still curling around him. 

All for nought. 

* * *

"Am I supposed to feel better you've nearly killed yourself"

"No, you're supposed to feel _bitter_ that I've been having all the fun." he counters darkly, chest heaving. 

Ravaged and sore the two regard one another, measuring, weighing perhaps if they are at wits end enough to attack the other. 

To succumb to the wild viciousness of grief and deliver the other, if not themselves too, from this revolving existence of pain. 

He begins shrugging back on his shirt, angrily throwing on the coat. 

"I heard her voice," Jenny says at last. 

He carries on. 

Hearing her voice has been nothing new to him. 

Jenny wrestles with the next thing, knowing that it smells vaguely of hope, and she is not sure she can bare watching Crane catch a whiff of it. Especially given how angry she will be if he fails again. "I heard my voice." 

Pause.

Blue eyes turn skeptically over shoulder. 

"I heard my voice, in the house, when I entered." she goes on in a rush. Fog has left her mind and it comes back clearly and with urgency. "You called me before I went over."

" _I_ called you?"

"Yes and no---there is something at the house Crane. That's what I came to say before---it's hard not to be mad at you. Just seeing you reminds me of it. I'm not prepared to apologize for the things I say or the way I act."

"Then don't" he replies curtly. "Tell me more about the house."

"It's fit for demolition inside, what can I say, but there were voices there and they....they were ours, hers, I....I could feel when someone walked through me---"

Narrowed gaze, "Through" 

"It was like I was a ghost. Damn it Crane don't do it."

"Pardon?"

"That. Thinking. Calculating. Planning---every time it gives us nothing and I can't....I might really hurt you this time if you screw it up."

Fierce as his instinct towards self preservation is, it seems a folly to hold on to now. "A life is not so much to lose." he says numbly. 

Jenny scoffs. " _Now_ you start agreeing with me?"

* * *

_"How are you?"_

_"I'm...still feeling out of it, to be honest."_

_"How can I make it better?"_

Crane gapes, appalled at his own voice ricocheting back at him. "What is this."

"I told you" Jenny hisses and then grunts. 

"What---" but then he feels it too, a strong purposeful stride right  _through_ him. "What was that," he gasps, winded. 

"Ssh" 

* * *

"Hmm, I don't know," Abbie hums softly, playfully as her husbands arms curl around her. Burying his head in the crook of her neck.

"I'm sure you can think of something," he insists, lips brushing against her skin in soft kisses. 

"Sounds like you've already come up with an idea." 

After Orion's departure, Abbie had released her reservations. She was here now, this was hers---she could feel it with rooted surety that there is nothing false about it. He's human, and she's awake. And things are normal here. 

Love, a downy soft sort, fills her.

It is not the dangerous draw of the Bond.

It is not the beholden fate entwined duty that clouded judgement no,

this is unfettered. She loves this man because she loves him, and not because destiny said so. He loves her for the sake of loving her.

A veil lifted and she has slipped into this life, with all of its memories and realities, as if slipping into something well loved and worn.  The strangeness dissipates. Her dark reminders are stagnant. 

They no longer rear up at the idea of him--recognizing that this man, Captain Ichabod Crane--is inherently, different. 

"I can show it to you much better than I can explain it." he rumbles softly and she turns in his arms. 

* * *

" _And where would you like to show me?"_ Abbie's voice, breathy, seductive, 

NOTHING

like he has ever known before wafts through the empty space and he turns to Jenny. 

"It's like she's here but not---"

_"I'd like to show you right here, against this wall,"_

A thud near Crane and a gasp and he jolts away, skidding on the dust and slips, cursing as he crashes down.

 

* * *

Abbie smiles as his blue eyes darken, her hands pinned on either side of her head when she hears a sound. 

An  _oof_

His hands support her against the wall and she locks her legs around him, running her fingers through his long hair and--she had  _always_ wondered what this would have been like but now she has _always known_  and it's perfect. 

"I would like to show you, here." 

* * *

The soft moan that wafts through the room instills in Jenny a profound new horror but Crane listens in rapt astonishment. 

"This is wrong. This is twisted. Come on, there's got to be a way to exorcise the thing"

_"Yes"_

_"Abbie my darling."_

That is HIS voice.  He holds up a finger. "This can't be a demon, why impersonate her, myself, you said you heard your own voice earlier, yes?"

Jenny scrunches her nose in distaste at the intimate sounds and whispers that are filling the air. "Can we please discuss this outside?"

 _"Ichabod_ "

A sigh. Gentle and sweet. He stills. No dead, no monster or creature could be so adept at mimicry. 

Not of her. 

Not Abbie. 

She is unparalleled and he would know the timbres and nuance of a hell spawn copy---he's sure of it.

"She's  _here_. Somehow---"

Two cries. 

Crane swallows, struggling with his curiosity. "Outside," he agrees. "We'll talk more, outside."

_" **I love you Abbie** "_

Frozen in the door way, Crane hears his own voice utter the words he never had the nerve to say. 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because there are obviously consequences.

_It nourishes her soul._

Abbie pulls back, meeting his eyes, so wrapped up together and joined, she is still so breathless but the way it made her feel. 

"Say it again," she commands him. 

"I love you Abbie,"

Oh, it aches. It....burns her and then kisses it better. Cuts and sews her back up. Bitter chased by sweet. How can it have so many things in it? 

Because there is a vague point of comparison, dimly flickering in her mind. A man who would never give you this, but gave freely of so much tumult and upheaval. 

She licks her lips and his eyes dart to her mouth. She laughs softly. "Say it again,"

"I  _love you_ " he emphasizes.

"How much."

"With everything I am." he answers earnestly. "With everything I could be. All my heart and soul--there is nothing I would not give, nothing I would not do, for you." he growls in her ear like the passionate devil he is. " _To you, if you desire_ " he promises. "I love you so much, I wonder how you ever find it in your heart to love me." 

"I can't help who I am." she answers truthfully. He meets her eyes and she stares deeply into them. Deep, past, to her life before she rose. To the iteration of him that let her go. "I can't help what you do to me. How you make me feel."

A vulnerable confession that she is unsure if she means for her husband, or the past. 

"Neither can I. If there has ever been a time when I have hurt you--- _I'm sorry_. And please kick my arse if I do so." 

That startles a laugh from her. "Alright, put me down." 

"I was going to take you upstairs, actually." 

"I'm in no mood to argue with you."

"Although you should," he insists, carrying her, still latched onto him up the steps. "I  _love_ sparring with you."

"You plan to keep me up tonight don't you."

"What kind of monster do you take me for?"

"An insatiable beast." 

He shrugs. "When you're right you're right."  he smirks and she throws her head on his shoulder, drawing a pattern with her finger. 

She says it quietly, so faintly she doubts her breath even touches the hairs on his neck. It's so fragile and precious to her, she still doesn't trust to give it life, but this is the safest she's ever felt to say it.  _"I love you, Ichabod"_

* * *

 

Orion watches Abbie laughing and loving her husband.

He smiles even in his distaste. To see Abigail Mills happy is such a treat in itself he cannot even be properly dismayed that it is with this more business like, although passionate Crane.

But he leaves that space and tails Jenny and the Crane left behind, intrigued, now that they have both seen the ruin of the house, the site of Abbie's first burning and so, with the passage of time in Abbie's first cycle has fallen into this wreckage, what length they can possibly conceive to set it right.

He watches them as they pause down the street looking over their shoulders and muttering.

"I don't think your books will help this time Crane, I can't imagine what would---" the earth rocks beneath their feet and a crude stair splits the pavement.

"How opportune."

"Stairs ways leading _downward_ cannot possibly take you anywhere you want to be." Jenny admonishes. Crane is rolling his eyes, setting a foot on said stair before his eyes widen and trips backwards from it. 

"No, but it brings those below where _they_ want to be."

Jenny narrows her eyes, twitching her fingers. "we getting company Crane?"

He swallows. "Well that's one, way, to put it."

Orion folds his arms as he lands in a tree, cocks his head to the side, amused. 

Abbie has managed to transcend this lifetime, this plane of a world in danger of being extinguished, but her transformation does not halt prophecy. 

Scripture declared Two Witnesses to  _fight_ the Apocalypse. 

Nowhere does it state there must be Two Witnesses to  _allow_ it.

In the life she burned, the war rages on. 

_Now we see who they truly are together, and when apart._

 


	12. Chapter 12

Abbie blows on her mug of coffee. Rich, dark, smooth and fragrant. Eyes half lidded as she inhales the rich scent and sighs happily. 

It's a sensible cup. No sprinkles of this or that or frothy foam, but still strong and delicious and---she can feel his eyes on her before he even crosses in front of her at the table. 

She's perched on the stool at the bar in a silky robe, that covers nearly nothing, slipping off her shoulders as she smirks over the rim. 

"Penny for your thoughts?" he entreats, buttoning up shirt and coat. He's an instructor at a military school--teaches war history. He looks good in uniform. 

Always does. His gaze roves over her, vaguely flirtatious. 

"it's nice to have time off from work" she drawls casually.

He blinks at her. "Work?"

"Don't I work?" she asks, panicked.

"You do but....you  _did_....but after...."

 _Oh_. The fragment clicks into place. Another facet of her new life becoming clear. 

"My accident." she summarizes, remembering now--what an odd thing to remember something she's never remembered before-- "On set." 

Because she is _was_   a stunt woman, of all things. And she had a rather bad accident doing a motorcycle jump--unstable ramp, and her husband had taken them to the cleaners for it---and right. She was in hospital. 

Lengthy recovery.

They'd said she was lucky she'd lived. 

And when she was better, when she was back home safe he'd handled her like porcelain. He'd doted on her before, always kept her close but after the accident he'd seemed given to the notion that holding her hand too tight and she might break.

It wasn't long after, the desire had become rather strong, quite insistent on her part, that they start a family. 

She was done doing stunts anyway. Her brush with death had given her perspective, clarity. She didn't want to leave the world with things she hadn't done before. 

And another thought solidifies then, a memory. 

When she'd gone flying careening through the air, his panicked yell, and 

_he'd thrown himself over her body when the bike came down. She was already broken in places and hardly breathing and he couldn't move her out of the way fast enough, but his body had shielded her from that last impact of metal and steel and flames. And then the way he had wrapped around her when it veered off and caught fire._

_He'd saved her life._

"Right." she says, swallowing thickly. 

"I know you miss it," he hints gently. "I know you do, it was just such a very bad scare, and you said, we agreed, that if we wanted to, _breed_ ," he smiles, "you would like time to just relax. But if you've had a change of heart---"

"No! No, Ichabod, it's quiet when you're not home, that's all."

"I can understand why. Being around the house can't be nearly as exciting."

No, probably not, she thinks, but smiles anyway.

"What, what are you smiling about?"

"Thank you."

He takes the mug out of her hands and makes a show of  sniffing it, raising a brow before handing it back to her and she can't help but snicker. "Whatever for?"

"For staying with me." she says. "Through everything."

"My God Abbie what else would I do?" he shakes his head, bemused. "To have and to hold in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer." he shakes his head again and comes over to kiss her. "There is no place for doubt here Abbie. Never was, never will be.  _I'm not going anywhere_ "

"See that you don't."

"Except for work, right now. But I'm coming straight home after," he quips.

"Go make that money baby."

He pauses. " _Baby_ " and then smiles to himself. "Please do call me that more often, it's...." he makes a shivering motion. "I can't describe why it feels good but it does."

"Hurry up or you'll be late,  _baby_ " she teases. 

He gets a wicked glint in his eye and he starts to approach her."Perhaps I should skip today. Call in ill" 

"Ichabod." she admonishes, slipping off the stool and backing away. "Sweetheart--baby," her mouth crackling a smile as he circles her around the island and she starts making for the hallway. And then he lunges for her.

" _Come here_ " 

"No," she teases before making a break for the back door. 

He gives chase. He catches her outside the shed, kicking and shrieking with laughter in his arms. "Go to work!" she implores him. He gives her messy kisses all over her face and neck before putting her down. 

"Get out the house today. Go for a run, to the gym....pick up some supplies, I haven't seen you paint in ages. Do something for yourself, I don't care what---hell go to the spa"

She scoffs and he rolls his eyes. 

"You're not fooling me you love having your toes done. Just," his eyes twinkle at her, and she catches the faintest glimmer of concern in them. "Take care of yourself. Alright?"

"You're being very good to me."

"Frankly Abbie," he screws up his mouth as he takes her in. "You don't know how often I wonder if I'm being good  _enough_ " 

* * *

The veil has been lifted on Sleepy Hollow and there are no more secrets being kept on the evils that wish to conquer the world and the good that wants to quell it. 

There is open blatant chaos in the streets.

When she chose her new form she disrupted the careful coddling bubble of ignorance that the world once knew.

Now the boundaries have been shattered. 

Civilians know now, that there are demons and wickedness at work---actively--children scream now openly of terrors once imagined now real beneath their beds. 

Murderers and thieves are trailed by the ghosts they made. 

Fiery flashes, avenging Angels break apart the clouds now to smite the imps clawing their way out of cracks in the asphalt. 

This plane, this world, is no longer tame nor safe. 

No,

it is raw heaving and unrelenting in all turns of savagery and surprising beauty.

Lucky thing, that civilians have been forced to push terror aside to beat back the gruesome things that come forward now. 

Ichabod and Jenny pray that these makeshift forces can hold off this onslaught at the very least. 

Orion takes in the scenery, scowls at the hand of the Almighty reaching down from Above and then at the Banished One Lucifer dragging himself up from Below. 

A battle.

Sides to be chosen.

And Orion is loyal to neither. 

* * *

 

"Come. I am taking you away."

Abbie glances over her shoulder as she closes the front door. "Are you going to make a habit of this?" she asks, turning an finding herself crowded by Orion's extended wings. 

"Do you prefer good little house wife? You do play domesticated better than I ever thought. It's disappointing."

Abbie narrows her eyes. "Make up your mind. You tell me to enjoy myself and now you're insulting me for it."

"It's just a waste to become what you are and to grow moss. Come away, Abigail Mills, I'm taking you out."

"Where" she asks warily, but already her curiosity is peaked and she begins shrugging out of the robe.

Modesty be damned.

Like the world she left behind,

oh well,

it's time some prices be paid that weren't on her account. 

"Your husband asked that you take care of yourself. I am going to help you with that."

"Are you spying on us?"

"Observing." and he grabs for her hand, tugging her outside. 

"Orion," mildly conscious of being scantily clad in her backyard. "How do you plan on helping me?"

"We're going flying."

"My flame---"

"Is for starting and ending cycles. Your wings are wings. Freedom. Embrace it. And it's part of you, it's good to understand your full capacity."

"I don't think this is what he had in mind."

The Angels amber eyes flash, and his wings beat once. 

She feels tingling in her shoulders.

" _Let go, Abigail"_ so she does, and immediately launches into the sky, screaming with the rush of it. 

When she opens her eyes Orion is hovering beside her, smiling. 

"Try and keep up." Abbie challenges, streaking away from him. 

He bows his head once, before taking off after her.

 


	13. Chapter 13

Millennia,

Of clouds to Glory to exile and darkness and penance.

Novelty--is foreign to him.

What  _is_ novelty. What  _is_ unique, and what is it to cherish something mundanely everyday? 

There is wonder, of course.

Awe.

When confronted with NeverBefore, with that which confounds and destroys sense, theory, logic. Surprise, when convention has been usurped. 

But novelty. 

He witnesses it now, however long after and still Abbie thrills with merely air passing through her feathers. 

Laughing, marvelling---what a precious thing it is, what he has taken for granted and has known little else, why it suddenly makes him feel yes, very fortunate, very grateful to be a being, blessed---yes he must concede to that now--with the gift of flight. 

It must be a human trait. 

But she is so far removed from average human now, that cannot explain it. 

She has an exuberance for life that drips from her. A brilliance, a glow so luminous that it confuses him and contorts his brain to believe she had been so willing to sacrifice, to bring about her own demise when she clearly loved  _being_ so much.

Perhaps the fault lies in she loved harder. 

Her sister, Ichabod Crane, he thinks bitterly, and the world--why the same world he'd have purged without hesitation had it not been for her. 

She believes in wonder and being fulfilled and feeling. Abbie is so many shades of  _want_ it dazzles his eyes to look upon her. 

Not for the least of which being she is not an inconspicuous species. 

Her plumage is the vibrant glittering hues of reds and golds at the end, fire bright dancing shades and further in, as they taper down into shimmering dark skin, glistening with sweat in the midday sun, like little stars themselves clinging to her form. Further in they are tranquil sweet blue. 

Beautiful.

Cliffside they perch, far far away removed from Sleepy Hollow, and it's not terrain on which they rest neither. But a far higher cliff face, of clouds and matter so thick one could stand on it. 

Quiet here, and nothing more than her breathing and gasping with joy and her wings beating slowly back and forth, brushing against his own. 

Abbie's eyes cannot open wide enough to take in everything that she sees and feels. It is not her first flight. 

But she has never been this high, this far Above. And certainly she has never had company. 

She and Orion had flown in circles together, diving over and under and around, racing and bursting through cloud and down, spiralling toward water only to glide gently along the surface, trailing her hand in cool waters before rocketing upwards again, dodging left and right among tree leaves and banking hard around water falls and rock faces, with other birds. Of paradise and of prey. They'd recognized her, fell into formation around her and had let her lead them, had  _played_ with her, frolicking in the air before she flew away. 

She's so fast. They, are so fast. 

It was perhaps mere wing beats before they'd departed Sleepy Hollow.

She doesn't know where they are now, but the sky is a sort of mauve shaded blue, darker grey clouds hover in the distance but where they rest here, among mist and air is marble white. Sunlight, or is it the Golden Gates---? shines through as matter shifts. 

They have been sitting here a while. She doesn't dare try to guess how long--it'll give her anxiety thinking she's worried her husband, that he will have found out---and yes, that's a feeling, she takes a moment to be nervous and let her heart beat fast--but this view, this chance, what she  _is_ this is a moment to savour.

And it is sweet and frothy and light and wonderful.

Dreamy. 

Her eyes drift closed and open only when she feels Orion's fingers tentatively stroking a feather on her wings. 

She doesn't stop him. It feels nice. Soon he is using all of his fingers, instead of just the one, petting, preening her and she relaxes into it. 

It feels like care. Like gentleness and affection. She won't sort these sensations.

She decides to let them be. 

He counts each one reverently in his head until he finds his hand has drifted to the nub on her back, where they disappear into flesh. He pauses.

"It's just skin." she laughs, and he looks up and catches her eyes twinkling at him. 

He is just a curious creature, at the end of the day. He may know the decor of Heaven and Hell, but he is not human. And in spite of his previous ambitions, and what he abhorred about the world and its inhabitants, he does not understand humans. 

How can he when he has never been one.

She is the gateway for him then.

The door that opens unto humanity. 

Even transformed, she is fundamentally of the world, mortal, in her core. Flesh and blood, he ponders, dismayed at the thought that she could bleed if hurt. 

"Orion." she tilts her head to the side. Because they are kin after a fashion now. Perhaps it is a bond forged on some, animal, primal, feathered level, but their flight has made her trust him. 

Agonizingly slow he reaches with one finger and glides it around the base of her wing, out, and up to her shoulder, and places his palm there, rubbing a thumb experimentally back and forth. 

"Well?" she asks, voice light and teasing. 

"I had thought to educate you, Abigail Mills. I find myself in my own course."

She turns abruptly then and touches his cheek. The contact jolts him. She furrows her brow. 

"Angels don't touch?"

"Comfort, sooth, smite." 

"Your mother?"

"I did not have one. Angels are, no origin beyond that. It might be jealousy that made me so sour toward the Earth. That they could interact and understand and enjoy something that is not.....native to me. And yet I watched them destroying it, destroying each other."

She holds his amber gaze, withdraws. "Why have you decided to follow me,"

"Your journey intrigues."

"Nothing more?" and there's a sudden steely edge to her voice that he cannot understand. Defensive or accusatory? 

"What you have become is endless. Spared from any great injury---no matter how many times you burn, I will be your soul companion throughout the ages, eternity. The world will turn and turn and come and go and you will burn and I will fly and will be here when you return. Eternity to become.... _friends_ " he finishes, the word odd shaped on his tongue. Like a square in a triangular space. "But I am not known for my patience."

She considers him before rising to her feet and he rises with her. 

They stand wing to wing before she takes a leap, plummeting out of sight and surging back into view a ways off. 

He joins her. 

"Thank you for showing me your home," she calls over her shoulder. "It's, unlike anything I have ever seen before."

"You are always welcome there." he hears himself say in a breathless rush, and it is yet another, wrong feeling. He is not given to tides of emotions. 

The ground racing beneath them, all too soon, her house comes into view, she curses softly as a car pulls up in the driveway and her spouse emerges. 

He glances up, a hand shielding his eyes from the glare but then there is nothing and he puts the key in the lock. Inside he thinks he sees a trail of sparks, flitting up the steps, a red and gold feather, but just as he stoops to retrieve it, equal parts baffled and curious Abbie comes bounding down the steps towards him, her arms open wide and smiling. 

She leaps into his arms and its distraction enough when she touches her lips to his. 

The sparks dim. The feather, dissolves from his fingertips. 

"Had a good day?" he asks breathlessly when they finally break apart. 

"An incredible one," she answers truthfully and lets the unshared detail die quietly in her throat. 

A secret.

* * *

In the midst of the battling fray---a momentary lull---Crane lurches back toward the house. 

Hope, misguided and desperate, that there might be something he missed there on the first visit. 

Perhaps hoping that with adrenaline pumping through his veins and his senses alert he will latch onto a vital detail. Something he overlooked---a shadow passes over head. Muted, far away, as if seeing it through many many many screens. Hazy in outline.  

But he recognizes the judgemental amber eyes that glare down at him, glinting penetrating points, before vanishing into the sky. 

He shouts after him but the Angel pays him no mind. 

He curses, of all things to find himself seeking the help of the rogue Angel, he'll need to summon him. 

But the Sigil went missing some days ago, before disaster came to court Sleepy Hollow. 

He hadn't paid it any mind but now....seeing the Angel gliding over the house...... 

Without thinking it through he begins bounding up the front steps. 

He can't piece together the reason for his surety. 

But now he suspects, and feels certain that yes, somehow, Abbie has returned, and yes, it might have even been her who had taken it from him---

That day outside his window. 

He'd thought it a hallucination.

But it  _had_ been her. Had to be. He doesn't understand how.

And how doesn't matter. 

The Sigil is here, in the mossy, foreboding tangle of house. And if it can summon Orion, he _must_ have answers about Abbie.

And if the Angel is difficult he will tear his wings off. 

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crane centric, both present and Future captain Crane. 
> 
> Love to hear your thoughts on this one. <3 
> 
> love you all for reading!

Days pass.

She lives she loves she laughs.

He wakes to her. Wakes her.

Kisses her, misses her,

once he's out the door.

For he has entertained in a distant way, that his wife gets herself into trouble with so many empty hours. Finds new hobbies and meets new people. 

In the early days, when her healing was still fresh, as fresh as the accident that nearly stole--

all of the soul, core and Earth of her from his life---

She was stalwart and steady, with fleeting moments of skittishness. 

She ran. She went to the gym--spent time, with her sister. 

Started painting. 

Mastered chess.

Developed an interest in ancient history. 

And these were all colourful, intriguing, inclusive in some ways, developments. In the midst of her discovering who she was without a job defining her, in their pursuit of parenthood, Captain Ichabod Crane always knew his wife. 

Her capacity for love and care and her hunger for life and all it has to offer, he has always known it and given it room to grow. Never took it for granted.

So when,  _who are you_ flits through his brain for the first time, it's as if gibberish, an invasive parasite has wheedled into his brain. 

When,  _she's never done that, before_ interjects, not once but twice, the steady centre of what they are built upon, their foundation, feels, rocked. 

It's not that he doesn't embrace her changes, that she surprises and delights has always been her charm he would follow her on any journey and any trek, anywhere across the world, even outside of it---

but it's the feeling.

That the change is happening, elsewhere, someplace where his loving familiar curious eyes cannot see. 

A shift, a turn, she meets him at the door everyday, exuberant kisses and dragging him off to bed and he doesn't object, no.

But in the still of night she thinks he does not notice how she creeps out of bed toward the window, gazing up at the infinite sky, presses a palm to the glass and on her face is an expression of longing, an ache. 

For something---

He will not allow himself to think someone---

Out there. Beyond him. Above him. Greater than. 

She thinks he does not notice, that she's changed.

Or is it he has only just opened his eyes, and he is seeing what she has been, all this time.

So much time together but still between them a distance grows. He can't understand it.

He loves and loves her, harder and deeper, more wildly than ever before.

He knows every pant and moan every cadence of pleasure. Every curve and hill and plane of her, and he stares deep into her eyes and he knows she loves him.

The love is so great and profound it is an arrow shot through his heart--leaves him gasping for air, the depth and strength of what they feel.

But then there is still some flimsy veil being drawn, and she doesn't seem to notice.

He doesn't dare say, defensive she gets now  and

_that's new too_

a third thought.

Third times the harm--

done, to whatever perfect thing they had, it has changed. And if only she'd tell him what needs to be done for him to adapt, if she'd only tell him---

but he finds her again after they've made love, staring out into the sky. 

 

* * *

_scritch_

_scratch_

_scritch_

_scratch_

a match striking, again, again, a quickly dying spark, but no flame.

No flame.

Behind the stone feathers stir.

 

* * *

 

 

 It's worse than before Crane notes as he searches, malevolent black leaves wave back and forth, hissing in his ear among the dust and decay:

_Coward_

_Coward_

_Deserter_

_Fool_

_Flighty_

_Our Bond_

_It is not our fate---_

_Liar_

_for  us to bury---_

_Liar_

_\---the other_

_Coward_

_Abbie No!_

_**You buried me**_

_Selfish_

_Coward_

_How could you_

_I choose---_

_to live in a world **without** me--_

_to forge---_

_Rather than leave it **with** me---_

_my fate----_

_My fate---_

_with----_

_with---_

_Coward---_

_You didn't even have them--_

_\---you_

_\---you_

_**Spell my full**  _

_Liar!_

_Coward_

_Name!_

_on my grave_

_**My man** \--_

_Indeed_

_Fate entwined_

_**Hah**_

_Deserter_

_Nine months_

_to clear_

_your_

_head_

_**ten months**_

_to                                          your_

_**two**       _

_weeks_

_and_

_in the catacombs_

_I never told you---_

_**you** were my wilson_

_Greatest Boon----_

_Your Queen to--_

_**anything** _

_you never told me_

_**anything** _

_I choose_

_to mourn her_

_rather than fulfill_

_our vows_

_**ten months**_

_to your two_

_weeks_

_Candle lit dinners_

_no words_

_**foam** faces_

_**no words**_

_hands held_

_no heart_

_absence_

_did not_

_make your_

_heart_

_grow_

_fonder--coward_

_Liar_

_watched me_

_die_

_wept later_

_only want me_

_when you can't_

_have_

_me_

_never_

_when_

_I_

_want_

_to be_

_yours_

_shattered bones_

_cracked foundations_

_broken words_

_duty_

_prophecy_

_betrothed me_

_to_

_you_

_Coward_

_Our Destinies--_

_entwined but never---_

_our hearts_

_nor_

_bodies_

_yet you_

_hold me_

_then release_

_me_

_**nine months** _

_**you** _

_**carried** _

_**my** _

_**abandonment** _

_**full term** _

_**gave** _

_**birth, to** _

_broken trust_

_one night_

_from your grave_

_disruption_

_my world_

_coward_

_Abbie No!_

_after_

_always_

_want me_

_Abbie No!_

_after_

_never_

_Find me, I dare you_

Cold and shivery as he walks among them, and with the voices of malice are still the echoes of her voice and his. 

A cacophony. 

Noise.

Dread.

Dust motes, ash, dead time.

Rot.

Weak floor boards.

One foot through and crash.

Grasp, struggle onward. 

Searching, weaving.

They will not be silent. 

They will not be silent.

Unlike the Abbie he knew.

They do not hold their tongue. 

He walks into the thick wall of ill mannered greenery, taunting him still as he wades through it, he gasps with cold, breath short, feeling it coil and wrap around ankle and limbs, holding him back, holding him still.

_Listen_

_  
_They demand.

_You will be still and listen._

_You will be still and hear us._

Struggling and wrapping his hands around vines, wrenches, snapping them loose, free, but more squeal and shriek to replace the ones he felled yet he soldiers on, battling through. 

A soft, glimmer. Among greenblack leaves, he lunges, again and again until his hands clasp around it.

Tendrils daintily creep around his throat.

 _I will not be silent._ they coo, his knees weakening. 

_Never again._

He falls, his vision, his mind goes hazy, thick, muted with voices, with still air.

_Coward_

_Liar_

_You buried me._

__

* * *

Wing beats. 

And his vision goes black.

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abbie's journey and discovery is not just a mystery to husband Crane. 
> 
> As always eager to hear from you all! <3 
> 
> thanks so much for your incredible support so far!

__

_A soft, glimmer. Among greenblack leaves, he lunges, again and again until his hands clasp around it._

* * *

Clouds have only ever been just that to him.

But Abbie sees shapes.

Creatures real and imagined and weaves together stories and voices and moulds and kneads them in her delicate brown hands, showing them to him with bright innocence and wonder before blowing them into his face. 

She comes here often now, once her husband has gone to work. 

He doesn't even need to lead the way. 

Somedays she sits in silence, wings folded in, staring off in the vast sky, with only her thoughts as company, even though he is right beside her. 

Somedays the air cannot be quiet for her exclaiming and yelling as she performs tricks. 

Once or twice, a flash of white light tells him they have company--divine brothers and sisters who have come to spy, to observe her from afar. He hears them chattering, using gossip words that they would never have known before.

But all rules have been broken. All norms overturned. 

Hears their soft gasp and then adoring hum of satisfaction when she sings. 

He came upon her there once, openly entertaining these other Angels. Singing and praying with them, or conversing in a tongue---an eternal Holy language he hasn't practiced in some time. And she does not tell him what knowledge they impart, only shoos them away with a smile once he arrives, knowing how they incense him. 

She lets him comb his fingers through her feathers.

He lets her share his world but the line is being blurred of where is his, anymore. 

She takes up everything. 

She draws and tugs and pulls, she is so greedy---she takes such great breaths it is as if everything belongs to her. Everything adores her and she adores it. 

Essence and vitality and aged wisdom and youthful oblivion all, sucked up into her, so highly absorbent. 

His home seems no longer his. She overwhelms him.

They spar, feinting jabs and mid flight combat and she barrelled him over, pinning him into plush moist air, her brilliant wings creating a rainbow cage around them, breathing her triumphant breath in his face before freewheeling back with laughter. 

He watches her now, glowing from within, and weaving strands of cloud through her hair. Every now and again she smiles at him and he's about to smile back, to reach and take her hand in his for the first time.

Hunger, a strange sort brews inside of him. It scares him--that too is wrong-- for surely it is an earthly want. A human desire. Has too much time away made him less divine? 

Or is it her---

A tug.

A yanking violent thing and he grunts with confusion. 

She is here beside him, who can possibly be summoning---

"I will return" he declares, distracted. 

Today is a contemplative one. He cannot tell how long she will remain after he departs, having what ever silence introspective conversation, what knowledge she will glean from the universe and visiting Angels--only he's sure she will not be there when he returns. 

Her husband is not the only one who watches a change come over her that he cannot understand. 

She is becoming more. 

Neither here or there. 

She pulses with soft light and a wing flaps in his direction, like a gentle an acknowledgement and dismissal.

She does not call out to him as he goes.

But she seems content. He clings to that as he leaves. 

* * *

 

What a frightful mess. He thinks as he descends upon the tangled greenery and hears the rasping breath coming from within it. With his blade he hacks through it, hears the shrill accusing voices as he does so and to his dismay--

unearths Ichabod Crane. The not so favoured one. The one of the world she left. 

He is so still Orion thinks perhaps he's dead before his eyes flash open and he lunges for his collar and then with a ping he sees the Sigil go flying from Crane's hands, back into the wicked underbrush. 

If he had ever known---a futile thought. The Sigil is his tether and he could not have fought it, but he likes to entertain the notion of choice. 

He grapples with him, and unfamiliar with the greenery, that is a living writhing angry thing, seems to turn on him now for helping their captive, finds himself at a disadvantage as Crane backs him up, and tripping, crash into a floor that gives way.

Down into a cloud of ash and dirt, searing his lungs. 

"You will tell me where she is" Crane spits and his eyes flash but then feels Crane's fingers gripping into his back. "You will tell me or I will snap it," he insists, eyes wild and feral and untamed. 

Who knows how long he had been ensconced there in torment but it has taken an evident effect on him. 

Crane is nothing short of half mad.

And that is being kind. 

"Tell me!" he growls, fingers tightening on Orion's throat. "You will tell me how to find her or you shall never see sky again--SPEAK INFERNAL ROGUE"

* * *

"Abbie?"

She doesn't greet him at the door today.

Today he keeps calling and calling for her until he is upstairs in their bedroom, and she is once more gazing out the window. But when she turns the sun is in her face and she smiles so widely at him. 

She holds out a hand and he crosses the room silently to her. On tip toe she reaches up to kiss him, twines their fingers and wraps his arm around her, pressing his hand against her abdomen. 

She closes her eyes and inhales. 

"Abbie," he says warily, hopeful but scared. 

"I love you." she answers. 

That is all the confirmation he needs. She squeals with joy as he scoops her up in his arms. 

* * *

 

Orion grits his teeth, preparing to strike with blade in hand.

"By Grave and Grave alone."  

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter! Need to get some things moving. as always, leave your thoughts!

"By  _Grave_ and  _Grave alone?_ " Crane repeats. "What do you know of graves? Of loss? What do you know of having something precious torn away from you---"

"I know the agony of absence." Orion retorts, waiting for his chance. "I know what it is not to know. That itself is a form of torture. Do you not think it pains me to watch you mortals cherish and explore and enjoy things that were never meant for me? To know there is pleasure to be had in the world and know that none of it is yours to claim?"

"Tell me,"

"I have told you the way, Ichabod Crane." he finally gets a hand free, poised above his opponents back. "Do not fear. I fully intend to help you."

* * *

 

She would clock him one if he wasn't being so sweet. 

He half hadn't believed her after setting her down, had asked "for clarity of mind, darling, could you---" and rolling her eyes she'd sauntered back into the bathroom with yet another test that would yield the same result. 

"The way we've been doing things you can't be surprised." she smiles, tugging his collar and flopping on the bed. He clambers up next to her, touching her stomach again. 

"Reality is quite a different matter,"

Even though there won't be kicking and moving for sometime, she watches him eagerly feeling and even absurdly pressing his ear against her. Listening. But when he draws back he surprises her.

"I must be delirious with joy--I could have sworn I heard wings" 

"Wings!" she exclaims.

He brushes it off casually. "I'm must be worked up. Here. I'll go, shower, and then we'll call your sister hmm? Tell her the good news, and we'll all go for dinner." he kisses her forehead. "I love you." 

 _Wings_ she peers down at herself when he leaves.  _Impossible. There is no way---_

A scream lances through the air, shredding her train of thought. She looks up, around, and then feels it, the sharpest pang. 

Like something has been torn. Crumpled. Blood? Is there blood? 

She's not sure if she should try this in her condition but she steps to the window, throws it open and praying that no one is looking up at their house throws herself from the ledge and takes flight. 

* * *

She follows only the sound. 

Scanning and searching and knowing the cry of pain comes from nearby and yet she cannot see it. It guts her as it reverberates. She keeps looking, trying to see until a dark stream goes streaking by her and she recognizes his pattern and she darts after him. 

His flight is off, his beats are uneven and he wavers in the air, until he begins to spiral dangerously down, down, down to the earth.

With great effort she is there to break his fall.

She only realizes how much she's grown then; seeing her great wings cast a shadow over them as she pumps furiously back toward sky, taking him home. 

When they land she lays him out and muffles a cry. 

Angels shouldn't bleed. 

Angels shouldn't cry.

And they shouldn't break. 

Angels shouldn't be grey cast in their skin and shouldn't appear so fragile---"Orion" the voice that breaks forward is heartbroken and unexpected. She runs her thumb along the plane of his cheek. "Orion, please,"

She notices his injury. A wing, the membrane torn and feathers matted with blood and a plant like ivy, she reaches to pluck it away and--- _Coward_

_Liar_

_You buried me_

_Abbie No!_

_ten months_

_to your two weeks_

_nine months_

_abandonment_

She drops it and rears away. Malice. Her malicious thoughts that have been dormant so long to her, that she has ignored, this remnant of her vengeful forest jars her. Crowds her brain with pain and memories and distrust. 

Yes. He abandoned her.

Left her alone. Let her die, watched her die, and only called for her after. Never told her he cared. Broke his vows. This forgotten and well parcelled hurt twists in her gut and she doubles over from the blackness swarming her vision. 

She fights against the hurt. She refuses to let it overpower her but glares at the plant and then turns her gaze on Orion.

How did he come in contact with it? Where did he go? 

Where has he been going, and has failed to tell her.

A secret.

She's not sure when she decided she was to have the monopoly on secrecy--- _after all of the things Crane with held from you, wife and son and heart and soul and words and love and being there---_ but she doesn't like the idea of there being an unknown, as it pertains to her. 

"Or--"

"Abigail," he groans, eyes opening slowly but they are dim, cloudy. 

"Who did this to you."

He shakes his head and goes slack. 

"No." she shakes him. "Orion no do you remember what you told me? There will still be you and me, you cannot---"

"Spared any fatal injury." he counters. "My ability to fly, my wings, Abigail, define who I am, what I can be---"

"Orion---"

"A broken Angel is an abomination to those who follow Him and even those who do not" 

"You're not about to say your last words to  _me_ Orion. "

 "Slay me."

She steps back as if scalded, her wings fold with shock. "What?"

"I will not live like this."

"You will live--who did this to you" she demands. 

"Deliver me,  _Abbie."_

Her name.

He stretches out his hand and his fingers tremble. Such a show of weakness fragments something within her.She reaches until their fingers touch, and she knits them together, watches as his face washes over with a sort of calm. "Orion," she whispers---for they are bound he has been the only one who understands what she is, has become, has fostered this journey in silence and awe, has introduced her to a world not contained by the ground, what she would have never explored without him. She kisses his knuckles. "Orion."

"Nectar," 

She looks over her shoulder and sees Angels, ones who have visited with her before. "Nectar is the healing balm though so few of us choose to survive injury. To burn out in Glory is our honourable way."

"There has to be another way."

"Then Nectar," the Angels sing. "Nectar, and if you hurry, he may be healed."

"I want whoever did this to pay. Whatever he has been---he was-- _is_ one of God's. Your kin and mine."

The Angels exchange a look, considering them before they fly away. 

He  is still silent, just barely stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. "I beg of you." he rasps. " What am I without wings?"

"Whatever you want to be," she insists. "You are more than just---" his grip flexes tighter and cuts off her words. 

"I already tend toward less than my being. If I become it--- _can I have what I want_?" his dull glowing eyes meet hers and  trail around her face. In them is a plea. A demand that she is not prepared to answer.  She drops his hand and clasps her stomach. 

"What are you asking,"

"You glow." he says instead, knowing the cruel terrain he treads,  voice growing ever weaker. "little wings beat within you," 

"I am going to help you. I'm not going to let you die. I---I will find who did this."

"You have a life, a husband, a chi--"

"Someone let me go once. I don't wish that feeling on you" 

* * *

Ragged and heaving Jenny curses as she stalks toward the house and hears Crane careening down the rotting steps, bounding towards her. 

"What" she starts but he grabs her arms and turns her about face, pushing her hurriedly. 

"Move!" he insists. 

"Crane you wanna tell me what the hell you're doing running off to this house---are those feathers in your hands?"

He grunts and shakes them out but keeps glancing over his shoulder in terror. 

"Crane---what the---"

A swarm. 

A great winged mass. A thousand if not more avian bodies, beady eyes glinting amber and black with clacking beaks. Glossy and speckles spotted and festive in their array crest the rooftop of the house and surge forward, emitting a shrill war cry. 

"Let me guess. They're after you." Jenny curses and doubles over. Too much adrenaline. Too much excitement. Breathing too rapidly. Her knees buckle and her chest gapes. 

"Miss Jenny!"

Her response is swallowed up amidst the screeching and of the birds that dive downwards and chase after Crane. She disappears in the mass of feathers. Her breath becoming shallow.  He turns back to call for her. " _Miss Jenny!"_

A pair of talons aim for his eyes. 

 

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I need your thoughts like air to breathe. Tell me what you think! 
> 
> this went some dark places. Present/Canon Crane gets his. 
> 
> Husband Crane might too :/
> 
> But i'll dig us out.
> 
> Hopefully.

Worms, are what the birds see as they swarm around her heaving form. Long, criss crossing worms. Wriggling with energy, weaving in and out of flesh. She is too breathless and riled to scream. She grits her teeth against the tearing sensation of her being. She doesn't want to find out what happens when one grief ridden half goes AWOL in this chaos. The squawking clamour and clack of beaks deafens her, their wings beating and battering against her body and her face and she can feel their talons gripping in and out of her skin as they walk across her. Pinching and pinching and biting in and she is sure there will be blood. She doesn't fight. 

They might attack her properly then. 

Her mouth is near stuffed with feathers and breathing becomes more difficult, more laboured. 

And---

_ssssst_

A bird has caught a string in its beak. It begins to pull. 

The searing pain---the scream that tears from her drowns out the other cry of anguish in the midst of the assault.  

There is only her, coming literally undone. Only herself falling open.

Dividing into

Two Halves. 

One leaving the other for dead. 

 

* * *

He saw her. 

Or the absence of her. 

When he waltzes back into the bedroom, smelling of soap and sandal wood and asking cheerfully, "Darling where would you like to go?" and is answered by nothingness. Still air. And all through the house there is nothing and no one. He dials Jenny. 

"Jennifer....I don't know how to say this but I seem to have misplaced your sister." he begins in cautious cheer. 

"Abbie?" she queries. "Did she say she was going out?"

"No, she was waiting for me to get out the shower, we were going to invite you out with us this evening, actually, I'm not sure--"

There's a choked sound on the other line. 

"Miss Jenny?"

"Cra--" another garbled noise. 

Worry sets in. "Miss Jenny---"

"I want my sister." it's Jenny's voice but not, a raspy scratching mournful thing. "Find my sister" she whines.

"I'm trying to---"

"Try harder," the voice snaps, malicious and biting. "You _never_ tried hard enough. _Find her_. _She's mine._ I won't let you lose her again,"

"Jennifer I don't understand where this is coming from. Your sister is not a child that I keep a tether on and I never---"

"Looked out for her, kept her, protected her, loved her the way you should."

Affronted and incensed he glares at the phone. These accusations are inaccurate, uncalled for and slanderous. "I adore Abbie, it's the reason why we wanted you to come out with us tonight, we're going to celebrate---"

"What a funeral?" 

" _ **What** "_ he gasps. 

"A belated wake?"

" _Jennifer Mills you are being---"_

_"Don't tell me to calm down, Ichabod Crane. You're not enough, you've never been enough, I've never been enough, and because of  me, because of **you** she is lost to us forever"_

He's tries to make sense of it. Jenny has never demonstrated any tendencies toward narcotics or exhibited any out of the norm behaviour. No psychological or other mental matters to grapple with. What then, has prompted this vindictive, venomous side of his sister in law to appear? 

Just as he is thinking it, another strangled cry. Scuffling. A muffled scream. 

"Find my sister" she insists. "Or I'll find you." 

"Jenny---" the line goes dead. 

He stands in their bedroom, dumbfounded for a beat before he begins bounding down the steps, a pregnant wife gone missing and a sister in law that's in trouble--- He leaps into the car and goes heavy on the gas. And then he's off. 

To the beginning or ending of something he's not sure.

* * *

Because Love, is universal and timeless. 

Love, and Happiness, Hate and Grief, all ancient elements of the human condition. They are always there, they always exist, they transcend time, held by no boundaries earthly or otherwise, they echo for years throughout history. 

Why else do people mourn the losses of lives in tragedies years and decades past? Why else do their hearts feel heavy and their eyes well out of empathy---they feel the grief. It reaches out to them, pulls from them demands their attention and that they act as cipher, a funnel back out into the world. 

But these things are usually kept in check by their counterparts, anchored by the other emotions, holding them in balance. And when this balance is upset one takes over, becoming its host, overriding it, tearing it asunder, becomes so unruly, so full and powerful, it commands a will of its own. It's own agenda, it's own plans. 

Half of Jenny, the side that keens for the elder that she lost, has darted away, like a bolt, like vapour, through layer after layer, tracking feathers, ash, essence, and has arrived in the New Time.

Felt the pull toward an,

Other. Of herself.

A Happy one.

One who had love, not grief, who had friendship and fulfillment and no memories of the horror she had witnessed and the loss she has felt and she slips in, through the window, like a gas, and manifests behind her, distracted on the phone, and she wraps her grief fingers around this Happier Selves throat. 

And its him on the other line. And she demands he return her sister. That he restore the precious sibling she lost and he is oblivious and it angers her. Her grip tightens on the throat, eliciting gurgling sounds and hands that claw and catch and to no avail, she holds on, despising this version of herself that is at  _peace_. 

 

 

She had wished this vengeance on Crane, but bound by that damn soul suture and grounded by the less ravenous half that grieved for Joe---reigned in her violent nature. 

But Crane is not here, yet, and she so loathes this ray of sunshine Self--the lips on Happy Jenny begin to turn blue and she feels nothing as her limbs go slack. 

_Good_

she thinks as her form crumples on the floor.

_Feel nothing ._

_**Be** nothing._

_Like me._

_How dare you be anything else._

And waits for Ichabod Crane, the loving adoring husband.

But she doesn't know that.

Or she doesn't care.  

* * *

They took his eyes. 

From one side to the other they had surrounded him. 

And in their place they stuffed his sockets  full of that wicked sprawling leafy horror. And their caws call to him;  _By Grave and Grave Alone_  

They chase him still, staggering, all but blinded with the whispers now in his mind and  _showing him her pain._

In sharp crisp relief he sees every ache and disappointment that he ever inflicted on her. Her pain is an unforgiving abyss. A pit of which she dug herself out of alone, solitary, in order to soldier on beside him. 

It is no blessing to have lost his sight---for he sees clearer now than ever before, he absorbs her rage and keening sadness. 

The loneliness. 

A Forever thing, stretching on and on and her hope, her faith in him, slashed to fine little ribbons and scattered like confetti rains down on his mind and sobs stick in his throat. He cannot even pause to be rocked to the earth properly with her pain for the avian army pursue him, without faltering, wings buffeting him and they peck and pluck and pull his hair, grip his coat in beak and talon, and drag/tug him to where he does not know.

Only that in this sadness, in this dark place that crowds him now---the place he had cornered Abbie in, more than once when he refused her the companionship, trust, and love she deserved---why had he so staunchly denied her something so simple? 

How had he come to be such a fool, to stand idle and watch her be brave again and again, taking burdens on her shoulders? It overwhelms him and blindly he goes where his feathered attackers want. 

 _By Grave and Grave Alone_ echoes in his mind, and then he falls.

He screams with the fall, struggling to rise, but he is somewhere deep, and dirt, dirt, dirt, and worms, and twigs and leaves, all around him, and the walls, hard packed and square and he cannot grip the edge, cannot begin to feel where it may be.

The Earth rains down on him. 

Great clods of it. 

One by one, each bird swooping overhead gathering clumps and drop it on him. The plant begins to grow, sprouting from eye and into the whole around him, creeping eagerly along, and he finally is able to break.

To weep. To cry. 

_Forgive me_

Broken in the deep dark whole. 

_I loved you but poorly, Forgive me_

A Grave. 

_What were my fears to yours? Abbie Forgive me_

_You deserved so much more than I gave._

The plant spreads and dirt falls.

He is being buried.

_You **buried** me_

**_Our destinies_ ** _**entwined**  _

The voices taunt and he clutches the piece of her headstone in his pocket as he is overcome by his errors and pain and what he has done. 

_**"FORGIVE ME ABBIE, FORGIVE ME THIS PAIN"** _

Each bird after completing their task flies off and watches from the trees, turning their heads inquisitively, listening to his howling until it is muffled and the whole fills. They march dutifully over it when done, sealing him in.  

 _"I loved you and will ever more. Until I die. I should have gone, with you."_ he trembles, face wet with the plants dew. Trapped and bound and down here, with dirt in his mouth, no one can hear him. 

The vines shoot up from the earth and race, scramble through the town and through a demolished house and find that which they look for. Curling around them they haul them through the streets with a hiss and shriek and screech on pavement.

The goblins and imps pause and follow.

The fighters from Above go still.

And the people cover their ears and grip each other as the Earth quakes. 

When the vines are done, they coil lovingly around what they have resurrected, twirling and twining over the grave, like a pretty green bed. They bloom. 

Each bird alights on it before they take to the sky once more. 

 

**_Here Once Lay,_ **

**_Grace Abigail Mills_ **

****

 

_**She Rose** _

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS NOT OVER.
> 
> just trust me okay guys?
> 
> So um, what happened to the other half of Jenny that got left behind?


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whole whack of stuff.
> 
> Hey Lucifer talks in this one.

Abbie is jarred by the ruin. 

The marred landscape of what is some hellish mirror image of her world. She grips the tendril between her fingers, dismayed by it's incessant hissing. It's voice alone has haunted her on this trek, _through borders._ Into the world she left behind. She hadn't known it was possible, it had never occurred to her, the concept one would think is like going back in time, but really, she is merely going through it, peeling back a layer. She has a mission, her first thought had been for the stubborn flower always trying to sprawl through her home before she burned the first time. The plant had lead her here. 

She couldn't unhear the taunting chorus of its brethren, writhing and thriving in---

Fire and ash and darkness and dank. There is war being made here still while she had been living a life of peace. Her heart stutters, her wing beats falter. Creeping across the pavement are great thick vines, dark coiling and weaving, and they come from her house, a form of it, and trail away from into the distance. She is aware of eyes on her when she lands. 

"Witness" creatures of Hell hiss. Lucifer smiles slowly at her, promenading down the ruined street and she backs up, wary. 

"Phoenix." and he bows to her. The image of it is so wrong her gut lurches. Her skin crawls and she brushes against her arms subconsciously, as if hoping to wipe away the taint of  this rejected and evil and gasps in quiet horror when inky fluid pools at her feet. Moulting. 

Lucifer is not a horned red skinned devil. His skin is white as snow with hair to match and eyes, she shudders to think it, eyes that shimmer topaz, as if lit from inside by a flame. An eerie sort of beauty, not unlike the golden hued gaze of her ailing Angel friend. He looks perfectly almost unnaturally beautiful, normal, and if her skin didn't crawl, and if his tongue wasn't forked, she might have been fooled into believing him a friend. He grins and flicks out his tongue to lick at the black fluid, daintily picking out the feathers, they look greyish and black now and she panics inside, reaching behind her to feel her wingtips and breathes a heavy sigh of relief to find them otherwise intact. He holds them up, examining them. 

"Beautiful." he murmurs reverently. "do you know I long since stopped believing in beauty until you came along? Until you decided to spite your partner? There is nothing so glorious as willful defiance."

"I am nothing like you." She starts defensively, hackles raised. "The Lord watched me, He understood" 

"Dear Phoenix we all watched you in awe. A creature defining her own nature. Truth be told I half expected it to backfire but look---" and he sweeps his arms wide to encompass the mess he's made of her home town. "Your disdain for Ichabod Crane, fate entwined," he sneers. "Has spawned such a grotesque jungle, and lets not forget the upset of balance your transformation caused."

"You're not going to blame this on me, I didn't choose this, I would never have chosen to leave the world like this---"

"After all to tie up your fate in that of the world is a rather daunting task, isn't it?" 

"It wasn't----"

"About the world who took but never gave to you in turn? Not about the partner who went back on all his word? I have him to thank, truly, if he hadn't done so poorly by you, none of this would have been possible."

"What do you want."

"You have one of my own. He thinks I do not see him, feinting left and right, avoiding the fray in order to court you. But he was mine when he parted with the Father.I will restore him."

Abbie knows better than to play dumb with king of the Fallen, it's more effective to be outright. "How do you know he was injured"

"Did we not all hear it? The piercing scream of a broken and torn wing. The barbaric animal yell of his assailant." 

At mention of it her anger flares. "Who, who hurt him."

"Bring me Orion, to his rightful place, and I will heal him, and when he has served he can return to you, loyal dog he longs to be."

Devil or none Abbie strides up to him, wings extended and for a moment all Lucifer does is gaze upon them, as if dazzled. "A pity you are Ordained." he murmurs. "To have you among us would, liven spirits."

"Who. Hurt. Orion."

"Do you love him, Phoenix? That is the pitiful thing he is after. That you love him. If you cannot, if you will not, turn him to me. Or allow him to begrudge you the rest of his existence. He doesn't have long."

"I said---"

"Desperation makes man cruel." he snarls. "Have you not seen it? when they are scared? when they are threatened? The way they turn? they run away to save themselves. They inflict harm to survive---don't you know of it? how many times have you been abandoned? How many times has someone fled your side? How many times have you raised a weapon, mounted an assault when you were at peril. Or angry---look at you. You are a product of anger are you not? Was it not righteous rage that made you remake yourself?"

"Answer me"

"Give me the Angel."

"Why, does he tip the scales for you?"

"I have seen what trouble is caused when one defies. Myself, you, I do not relish the outcome should Orion turn from the path that is his, _became_ his when he Left." 

"I'm not going to hand him over to you, he's not a bargaining chip, he's"

"What, _Phoenix_ , a friend? Surely you know the agony of such enduring close _friendship"_ he leers. "You would resign him to that?" 

She feels the accusation down to her toes and shakes with the fury of it.Heat courses through her but it drains down to finger tips and the tips of her wings, not within. Flaming points dance at her fingers and whips them like flaming darts at his face. 

With horror she watches them strike, stand, and then dissolve into his pale skin, holes closing over where they were before. "If you care for Orion, you would not inflict on him such a fate."

"You don't know anything about care, that's why you are who you are."

"Ichabod Crane." Lucifer says simply, turning his back to stalk away. "It was him who screamed DAMNED WINGED ATROCITY. Before all the world knew the sound of an Angel in dire pain. You may thank him for that. Give Orion his Freedom, Phoenix. Bring him to me, and he shall have flight. And in time he will forget you, and he'll be happier for it." 

Flames rocket towards him, she screams her frustration amidst the attack, and in a plume of smoke he is gone, but she can still hear him laughing around her. She shakes her head and starts for the house.

This unruly jungle is  _happy_ to see her. They practically screech with joy and adulation. This bitterness and melancholy is so gleeful to be hers and the truth is she hardly recognizes it. Was her hurt this strong? this deep? 

Yes.

And deeper.

six feet below and buried alive partner deeper.

But she doesn't know. 

They reach out like tentacles to stroke and caress her skin, preening with her presence. She tries to block them out of her mind as she pushes waves of leaves aside and meanders toward her kitchen. She still cannot understand how this world remained after her leaving it, beneath her new one, but it's wrong and sick and she wants to leave---but she also wants revenge. She finds fury kicking up in her again at the thought of Crane harming Orion. How dare he.

He understood my worth in mere minutes, faster than you had.  She thinks as she searches, hunting and finds the little vine, shrivelled up, cowed by the rest of the greenery.  

"Bloom for me" she implores. "Please. Orion needs your help. Please, bloom."

* * *

The vines over his grave feed on his heartbroken tears and begin to flower, bursting little blooms of red and gold and blue. They rear up, triumphant and flourishing on his sorrow and the flowers begin to race along back to their source, to the house. 

He has needed to cry, has needed to weep for his great waste of time and mistreatment of his one true love. The garden had been heard at last, and hearing his pain, heave a sigh, lighter, released, grateful for the admission of his wrongs. 

* * *

 

Abbie is still pleading with this one vine when the house gasps and then exhales into an array of colour. She turns slowly and blinks. Violets roses lilies blue bells daffodils lilacs, all manner of flora and fauna begin to override the dark tangle of leaves and though they still whisper they seem smug somehow. 

_Forgive him_

_at last he begs_

_forgive him_

_coward_

_broken and scarred_

_error of his ways_

_he weeps!_

_he mourns!_

_He has heard us_

_he has heard you_

On and on they chime, a macabre sort of singsong but the bit of green she was trying to coax rears up suddenly in a shade of pure gold, a heavy, bulbous bloom with silken petals and as she touches it, it is warm beneath her fingers. Pulses softly with light and she can see the nectar pooling within it, as if wine is being poured in a cup. 

_Tears cleanse_

_tears heal_

_He weeps now_

_so many tears_

_sorrows in the ground_

_so many cries_

_no one hears him now_

* * *

 

He claws up and through dirt into a world that is quiet. He cocks his head, listening, waiting but there is nothing to spark alarm here. He remains blind. Grasping and grappling he hauls himself out of the grave.

He does not know what he expects to find here, but he goes on, hands outstretched and relying on his senses to guide him. There is not much of his senses left, and not much will or heart. Hopelessness was in that grave. The heavy more real grief.

He had loved her and let her go.

Not once.

Not twice.

But three times. 

Third times the harm,

done, to whatever beautiful thing they once had. 

He doomed them. A small relief to embody it fully, to embrace this guilt and accountability. 

He is not sure why he has been spared death to wake once more. Unless this is his own penance. 

But if he wasn't before, now blind to the world, surrounded by darkness seeing nothing of value or worth, nothing that could make him smile but then again---if he cannot lay eyes on her, what good is being able to see?---he had said it before, but the meaning is more true now.

There is _nothing_ for me in a world without you, Abbie.

The world is black bottomless fathomless void.

And you were my only light.

His feet stump into steps and slowly, foolishly he clambers up them, wrapping his hand around the post of the veranda to steady himself. 

The sound of wheels in the drive way.

* * *

 

She glances at the blue form of Happy Jenny in the living room and  pulls back the curtains before she goes to answer the door. 

The old and the new, in once place, she muses. She will get to have vengeance not once, but  _twice_.

* * *

Her other grieving half, takes longer to rise. 

Mourning Abbie has taken most of her strength and spirit, so the departure of her other self leaves her severely weakened. She goes to all fours, slowly, slowly, it is painful to be this groggy and numb when she has always been given to being lightening quick when she takes in the strange trail of blossoms now racing across the pavement. 

In the middle of this destruction for flowers to bloom in earnest is an affront to her senses, especially given the violence she just suffered of having her suture removed. But If she knows anything, it's that changes such as these do not just, occur. 

Spitting once on the pavement and flexing her fingers experimentally. Her skin is grey cast. Half of herself gone she is less vital, now, less strong. A sob threatens somewhere in the back of her throat---the tears she tries to staunch for Joe---but there is not time for her to let  _that_ take over when she is literally missing part of herself. If she gives into it now she doesn't have the strength in her all together to stop. 

Annoyed, grouchy and weak, she ambles back to the cursed house. Former home of her loving sister now seems to bring nothing but bad omens but as she braces the door she is astonished by the curtains of flowers now swaying everywhere. Their muttering still grates on her ears but she can hear them now relishing in some lesson that has been learned, some realization made, and yes, they cheer, fool, coward, too late, always too late----she weaves through them, not wanting to expend unnecessary energy when she hears footsteps. 

Her grip is too weak for a gun or any other weapon. She is weary and mightily fending off a bout of despair, so let them come and finish her at last. Half a self is not enough to endure the half live she has been living. Might as well write her off for good. She leans on a wall, waiting patiently for whatever new terror to strike her down at last. 

 _I'm coming,_ she thinks to herself wistfully. She thinks it to Joe and Abbie. _I'll be there soon._

* * *

She staggers with bloom in hand and golden nectar sloshes on the floor. 

"Damnit" she curses, and then glances up at the sliver of a being. Confusion and concern play tug of war within her. And then the form folds in on itself. " _Jenny!"_

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lucifer really needled Abbie didn't he? 
> 
> But a version of her sister just collapsed in front of her so lets deal with that.
> 
> That and the rogue part of Jenny is out to kill both iterations of Crane....:/


	19. Chapter 19

"Jenny, Jenny, come on, wake up come on." she implores the greyish hued form of her sister, who trembles at the sound of her voice. 

"Abbie?"

Tears brim in her eyes. She sets the flower down and lifts Jenny's head. "It's me, Jenny it's me." but this isn't the bubbly Jenny that visited her house for brunch, and this isn't even the one that she left behind when she died. This Jenny.....she glances down at her and inhales sharply, taking in the ragged holes down her sister's chest. Two even rows of them. "My God. Jenny? What  _happened_ to you?"

Her eyes stare off past her, transfixed by the flowers now bobbing overhead in the house. "I don't understand," she rasps weakly. "It was a mess before...." 

"What was a mess before, what, Jenny talk to me"

"The house....old and rotten and....."

"Jenny! What happened?"

"You took me with you," she says, smiling the faintest most fragile smile. "Not enough of me to keep you company but piece of me went with you, Abbie, when you died," tears well and stream silently down her face. "I should have done more, to protect, you."

Abbie shakes her head."No. No Jenny I never would have wanted that for you---"

"But you wanted this instead?" she queries. "Leave me a broken mess to save the world?" she chuckles and it's both sad and dark. "I grieved so much for you and Joe I couldn't contain it----the monsters kept coming after you died......didn't even give us a grace period.....some faerie.....split me."

" _Split you?"_

"Hmm" Jenny nods, a disconcertingly pleasant smile on her face as she does so, patting Abbie's hand absently. "Two grieving Jenny's for the price of one," she croaks. "Dad and Crane finally caught up to it, sewed me up, that's what those, were for," she points vaguely to the empty holes in her body. "Laced me up." her eyes roam over Abbie's face. "Are you sure you're real? or am I dying?"

Alarm races through her system and she grasps Jenny's shoulders firmly. "You are  _not_ dying Jenny this is me, I'm  _here"_

"But how," her sister whispers in wonder, eyes not focusing. "How."

"Don't you know by now I'm stubborn?" Abbie asks. Jenny looks at her with those faraway eyes, grips her hand weakly and she can see the dim hope shimmering in her. She still doesn't dare believe. Abbie licks her lips. "Jenny, you said there were two of you."

"Birds" Jenny murmurs, thrashing her head from side to side. "Birds, birds, birds,"

Her stomach drops. She'd sent the birds to punish whoever had hurt Orion. She didn't think Jenny would be caught in the line of fire. 

"What...." she swallows and fear alone makes the feathers within her tremble. "What did they do."

"Unlaced me, of course." and for that split second clarity settles in Jenny's gaze. "Two of me. One to mourn Joe, one to mourn you."

"And which are you, Jenny. Which half are you?"

The look her sister gives her breaks her heart. "You're a part of me, no matter which half I am. But the Abbie half wanted revenge for you. She's gone. Escaped."

"Revenge on who."

"Who else, Abbie?" and she begins to sob. "I miss Joe," she wails, finally giving into her nature. The water won't stop now, her body shakes and quakes with it. "I miss him so much. It hurts Abbie, It makes me bleed." 

"Come here," Abbie coaxes, curling her sister up in her arms, she glances back at the flower and knits her brow. She doesn't have enough hands. She concentrates and has no clue whether or not sheer will can do the trick but she gives a small laugh of triumph when the flower lifts from the floor and floats toward her. "Praise God." she murmurs as the flower hovers and settles in Jenny's lap. 

"Crane," Jenny burbles. "I can't tell you how tempted she was to kill Crane. Oh, Joe," she moans, face wet with tears and Abbie smoothes the hairs back from her forehead. 

"Where is Crane?"

"Nothing after the birds." Jenny says miserably. "Nothing after the birds." 

* * *

 

And Bloodbloodblood makes everything stronger.

That's what he'd told himself in the early days after her passing, etching a rune over where his heart should be. Whispering dark words that would make him forfeit all of his greatest virtues in exchange for her return. 

_Take from me, and give to her._

_Take from me and restore._

_Take from me, every ounce of bravery, heart and love,_

_and let her be more healthy and whole than ever before._  

 ** _Take from me,_** he'd wept, with droplets of blood spattering the floor, and tears and pain as he scratched into his own chest, watching his reflection in the mirror.

_**Take from me---let it all be hers.** _

_**Everything in Life she deserves**_.  

Then he'd lit a match, the rune burst into flame, and he'd screamed with the pain of it, the mirror cracked with a shriek and he crashed to his knees----

* * *

 

And Captain Crane threw his body over her's for cover. Felt shrapnel and flame and he carries a scar from it still, in the strangest place on his chest, over his heart. 

He was everything, every hidden facet and corner buried away and cloistered within that had been kept under wraps. 

Crane hadn't known.

He hadn't anticipated that his incantation would literally pull from him, projecting and manifesting in a parallel future. He hadn't known the spell would be so literal.

_Take from me, and give to her_

He'd thought it a sacrifice of his virtues to revive her from the dead. 

_Take from me and restore._

_Take from me, every ounce of bravery, heart and love,_

_and let her be more healthy and whole than ever before._  

And she had been, in her new life. Happy, loved, cherished. Complete. 

_**Take from me---let it all be hers.** _

_**Everything in Life she deserves**_.  

Happily married, starting a family with his future self.

He'd given Abbie everything, but only because he'd lost her the first time. Only because he had failed. And now---

"Who are you?"

 _His_ voice. Crane claws at the air and is met by strong hands--- _his own_ , grasping his. "What are you---" he feels him reel back, horrified, by the empty sockets. "What---"

and the door opens.

"Jenni--" he starts to address his sister in law but her eyes are cold. Brittle glass ice cold. Dark unyielding vacant. He stretches to peer around her shoulder and sees a pair of legs stretched out on the floor behind her. She grabs them both by the collar, all but lifting them off their feet and both men shout, the same voice echoing and protesting and fighting but she is strong.

Grief is strong. 

"Help!" they scream. One because he is frightened. One because something is obviously wrong with his wife's sister. "Help!"

"No one's going to help you," she promises. "Who helped Abbie?"

* * *

 

Still and in wait, Orion lies. 

Feathers fall. 


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Comments please!

"Well where is she" 

Orion keeps his eyes closed, wishes he were deaf. He can hear Lucifer trying to coax him even from so far below. 

"She'll never want you the way you want her. Never give up everything the way you would and still suffer for it---Look at what she has become, answering to no one but herself, and a life she lived in such faithful service to others, you think she would turn her back on all these possibilities for you?"

Its a torture that he cannot fly away to escape. It's one of the reasons he had always been  so mobile. It made it harder for Lucifer to track him down and hiss his damning entreatments. But now, lying still so long, damaged and prone, the devil has tracked him, and continues to call for him, as if he was a wayward son or brother that he simply wishes to return home, as if he holds his best interests at heart. 

"She will hurt you, Orion. Mark me. She will hurt you and the depth of pain you shall feel will be worse than any broken wing."

"Rot." he manages. "Rot and burn."

"When the time comes," he promises. "When I march on the Heavens, do not think you will be immune from my wrath. There are prices to pay for such deviance."

"You would know."

Below, Lucifer sneers up at the fathomless sky. "Yes, you  _wretch_ I would know. And so would she. There are consequences, always. It's whether we have anything left once the debt has been paid. And I intend to leave you desperately poor."

" _Smite me_ and be done with it" he growls, straining to rise. 

"And ruin my fun?" and then there is nothing but Lucifer's laughter, ghost like chuckles radiating through the place Orion calls refuge.

* * *

Like calls to like, it appears the law applies to grief. She finds herself returning to the happier realm she'd left before and landing outside an otherwise unfamiliar house. 

"Here,"  Jenny croaks weakly. "Here." 

They've only just touched down on the porch when Abbie hears it. Three voices. One that sounds like Jenny---this nonsense again, she thinks, mouth twisting---and  _two_ that sound like Crane.

"That can't be good." she says, setting Jenny down on her feet and she walks slowly, like a wraith and presses her face against the glass. 

"She has him." she informs Abbie. "Both.....?" and her voice trails off in confusion. 

Both. 

Abbie peers over her shoulder and nothing in the world fits right. There's another Jenny in there, this one more colourful but with a sort of darkness curling under her skin and there's---

 _Crane_  

her heart lurches and don't ask Abbie for which one. One has dishevelled hair but.....she feels sick, violently so and she can't fight the urge she turns and wretches. No eyes. None. And she knows that is the man who hurt Orion, who put him there on the verge of death, this is him, this is the man that

Let you go, Abbie.

Who called for you after, but never followed behind.

This is the one who buried you, broke all of his promises,

and comforted himself with remnants instead.

This is the man for whom you carried such anger and made yourself all that you are, to spite him. 

You turned to ash to torment him and then found yourself returned to--- _him_ \---the other Crane. Her husband Captain Crane.

For whom she is carrying a child. Who has loved her so profoundly and deeply, who is tidy and keeps his hair long and he is all of the parts of Crane she has wanted while she lived and never got. They are both here.

How is it that this man is both her joy and her sorrow? 

Equal and lesser?

They are both shirtless and bruised, who knows how long this dark Jenny has been assaulting them and with what. "Stay here," she cautions, but this Joe grieving side of her sister has already crumpled into a weeping ball. 

Jenny should have mourned Joe properly when he passed or else it wouldn't override her so now. The anger she carried over Abbie's passing is to blame for this too. Jenny should have cried, should have wailed and wept, shrieking with it long and loud and never tried to contain it. She cannot help but give in to it now, at  its most inopportune, she succumbs to what she has been so mightily fending off. 

She leaves the bloom with her and pushes open the door. Both men turn toward her and their captor too.

"Abbie!" the Captain lurches toward her before he's slammed into the floor. When he lifts his head blood trickles down between his eyes. "Abbie," he says, eyes brimming with tears. "Darling, somethings gotten in to your sister I beg you--- _go_ " She does the exact opposite and steps further into the room, growing cold and still as she sees yet another Jenny form, bluish and still lying on the floor. " _Abbie_ " he commands, grunting as he pushes to his feet. " ** _Go!"_**

She cries out when he's thrown into a wall next to his blind counterpart  "Abbie?" 

"Crane. I don't---"

"You live" is all he says, knees buckling. His reaction astonishes her. He lifts his head in the direction of his assailant. "Do what you will with me Jennifer I have earned it. I do not deserve to enjoy her now--"

"SILENCE" she roars, arms stretched out before her, one holding blind Crane in place in the middle of the room, the other pinning Captain against a wall. "You are cut from the same cloth," she intones. "You will pay for it."

"Jenny." 

Dark eyes turn to her. Black things. 

"It's me, Jenny, I'm safe, I'm here, you, you don't have to do---"

"He, let, you die," she says, anger and grief mixed into a heartbreaking haunting sound. "Watched you and did nothing. Scarred himself trying to bring you back after you were long gone, dead and buried---what did we bury---there wasn't even a body---" she chokes. "An empty casket. Like his empty words. I should have pushed him in, with you." and as she speaks, both versions of Crane begin to gasp for air. 

"Jenny stop." she panics.

"Die,  _together_ that's not so hard, is it? He'll fulfill his end of the bargain now, they both will." 

"Jenny."

"We, failed, you. I..... _grudged,_ you. I never should have done. I should have listened, you paid for all my mistakes and then his cowardice besides. The price is  blood. The price is life."

Abruptly she drops both, that's when Abbie notices the identical scar they both carry on their chest, over their heart. 

Her husband got it from saving her life but why does--- "Some spell." Jenny hisses. "Some one of his  ** _damned fruitless attempts_** when he should have cut deeper and ended himself." 

"What do you mean---" 

"it was literal," Blind Crane chuckles darkly, turning his unseeing gaze all around the room. "Take from me and give to her. I thought it would bring you back to me. Though I didn't deserve you, it took me losing you to know I wanted you," 

On the floor, beaten and confused her husband looks up at her, reaches for her. That's when she remembers.

* * *

 

_"You're being very good to me."_

_"Frankly Abbie," he screws up his mouth as he takes her in. "You don't know how often I wonder if I'm being good **enough** " _

* * *

"Oh my God"

 The same man, two parts of the same man.

One who betrayed her and harmed someone she cares so deeply for and one who---she looks sadly at the father of  her _child_ \--one who has given her only joy. Only love. The one who exists only because the first lost her to begin with. 

She is so angry. She's so hurt. To whom does she turn? Who does she comfort? Does she thank the one who let her die for sending this part of his being to her Future? 

"What happened to the Jenny that lives here," she asks tearfully, already knowing the answer. 

"She was _happy_. She had  _you._   _He_ had you. None of us deserve you. None of us ever again." and then she darts forward, energy grasping both Cranes and fixes her hands, fingers curling into their chests over their hearts. "None of us."

"Jenny stop!" pleading she approaches her. 

"It's the only way"

"JENNY THERE'S ALWAYS ANOTHER WAY--- _ **NO!**_ "

* * *

 

Fallen like a felled tree.

Unnatural twins, unintentional existence, bleed and go,

Down.

With her heart, with her love.

Every drop of hurt and pain and redemption and hope.

All the wrath she never unleashed.

All of the soul core and Earth of her she had yet still to give

An unhinged voice chimes like a wicked nymph " _Timber!_ "

And two, become one.

One blue eye stares up and traces her. The other barren and unseeing.

Meshed back together. One form.

One broken, bleeding form.

One gaping whole, one reopened wound, one joining scar.

That  gave her everything.

Tiny wings in her womb.

That gave her nothing.

Bitter reformation of her being.

One man, now. One

Her sorrow and joy unified.

Her hurt and healing.

One.

This one.

How had she been so slow?

How had such vengeance  been so swift, in the blink of an eye---this was what it had been for him, helpless and slow---

"Crane," her voice fractures, and somewhere deep within, a forgotten weight threatens to splinter. "Crane," 

She wants fury still, for Orion, for his failure. But she needs, wants his love--the part of him he gave, the part that helped her form this new life---yet still only because he wronged her.

To think she should profit from his shortcoming. What would she have were it not for his desperation?

Heavy breathing behind her reminds Abbie they are not alone. Outside one Jenny continues to weep and before her this other one, this one who.....

"You killed him."

There are tears in this Jenny's eyes now. Inky black rivulets. 

"You  _killed him_ "

"He hurt you." this destructive grief ridden being becomes small suddenly, like a remorseful child.  " ** _He hurt you. He had you and wasted it. He should never have you again, not after what he did. Not after what I let him do"_**

* * *

_Scritch_

_scratch_

_scritch_

_scratch_

Lights the match. 

She knows what she must do.

* * *

 

"Come here Jenny," she stretches open her arms, her wings unfurl behind her. "It's alright Jenny come here." she speaks through silent tears and the grieving form approaches her slowly, cautiously. "It's okay." she murmurs, and her tears come harder, like a tide. "I know you did it for me. I know. But you have to let it go, Jenny. All of it, all of that pain."

"I'm sorry," she weeps, curling into her sisters warmth. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry."

"I know." she swallows. "I forgive you Jenny. And him too.I forgive you."

The heat starts in her toes, creeping up slowly through her body and she tightens her hold on this horrible facet of her sister. She doesn't know what happens now, how she can possibly survive it, but she cannot leave behind this agony to flourish in some new way. And this part of Jenny at least needs to heal. 

Her feet go first, with little red and gold sparks, then licking up and along her frame, dancing flames. 

"Let go, Jenny." she whispers, shutting her eyes tight. "Let go."

"Don't leave me"

"I'll never leave you." Abbie promises.

"Did you love him?"

" _Yes_ " she sobs. 

"Which.....one....." her form begins to dissolve into black smoke.

" _Both_ " she replies brokenly. Hating the truth of it but don't they always say the truth hurts. " _I loved them **both**_ "

The face is the last to go. "Thank you" she whispers, and then she is no more. 

The heavy grief Jenny had carried for her sister, 

Burned away.

* * *

 

The Jenny on the porch has dragged her weeping self inside the house and brought the flower in too, and strolls past the broken body and the dissipating vapour and even the living flame that is her sister as in a trance, and seeks out the body of Happy Jenny. She stares down at it, more corporeal than she is, and setting the flower down, she lays down, in her Happier selves body, closing her eyes. She heaves a sigh of relief as breath starts once more, shallow but there. But she lies still, her body and brain making adjustments. This is two different layers and lives trying to agree to share space. To unify.

* * *

Still burning Abbie walks back to him, sinking to her knees. " _Ichabod_."

He reaches a hand up to her. He is friendpartnerhusband, a man she scorned and a man she loved. One.  "You're burning."

She nods and wipes away tears. 

"I'm sorry----"

"Please, don't---"

"for every time that I was not the man you  deserved, Abbie. For the heart that woke up too late. Abbie, I apologize---" she cradles him in her arms and one hand grips into her feathers. She bites her tongue against the pain. She won't need those anyway, once she's through. She can see her own fire dancing up her neck.

" that I have loved you best, when you're not, mine, to keep."

And then there is ash, 

red and gold sparks skittering across the floor,

and feathers in his grasp. 

* * *

The Angels make room among their assembly where they pray and sing as she appears among them, sobbing uncontrollably. They let her lean on their shoulders and stroke her hair as she shivers her loss. She is not prepared to return yet.

She won't be for some time. 

* * *

 

Shock.

The universe quakes with shock.

So many disruptions, boundaries crossed, knitting and tearing of beings. 

Balance upended again,

It cannot, cope, with these changes.

And so it quakes.

And all manner of wicked minion is rattled back down below and the ground seals over. 

And all of the Holy Warriors ascend rapidly back into the Heavens.

And the war ends. 

And the people are quiet.

And the world stops turning. 

The Universe stands still. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't over yet.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! and I'm wrapping this one up soon folks.

Loyal followers amid the disruption, the birds gripped the petals between their beaks, and sharing the load among them, took it up. 

She was too distraught to greet them, to take it from them and deliver it herself so it was one of the Angels, excusing themselves and their arms laden with the bloom that went in search of their wounded and estranged kin.

* * *

Orion spluttered as the contents of the flower were unceremoniously dumped over his head. Golden thick fluid coating his face and then being dutifully smoothed over the injured wing. When he tries to speak there is a gurgling bubble which the Angel pops, and then smears the nectar back from his forehead, away from his eyes. Beside them, the flower has refilled.

He'd felt the shift again. That something had occurred but was unable to do anything beside lay still and endure it. "What happened," he manages, roughly, throat on fire; it has been some time since he has spoken Blessed. The Angel goes about their ministrations and then opens their mouth to speak.

"Phoenix" they sing simply, eyes peering  curiously at him. 

He doesn't know what answered he expected, the Heavenly Host has been staunchly curt with him since he parted ways. He supposes he should be grateful it even bothered to answer him. So he's all the more surprised when they carry on. 

"She will come to tend you. For now her spirit is troubled. When she is fortified, she will come." 

* * *

Time has ground to a halt. 

Barring the realm of Above and Below, the earth is at half tilt on its axis. 

The Universe is skittish about letting sand run through when so many unprecedented NeverBefore things have occurred and are still occurring. Breaches of layers. Collisions of selves. Injured Angels, Burning, the Universe took in all of this and has stopped out of self preservation, until it can understand what its new landscape will look like, it stands by. 

For his part, Orion had understood his injuries to be grievous but still her had underestimated the vigilance that would be demanded in order for him to heal. The Angels still come, promising that the Phoenix will eventually, and yet every day he is met with more and more of them gathered cloud side, praying and singing and grating his ears. 

He has not been of their part for so long, their praises and speech itch. Familiar though, and distantly, like a memory, comforting. 

Time is not a concept of which the Holy and Divine keep track unto themselves. It is a monitor for dwellers of the earth, but among them months years and day pass and feel nothing and know no changes. 

Except for her, when she comes to visit with him at last, she is the only physical embodiment of time passing that has ever been known in the Heavens. 

The Father pressed his thumb to her crown and had lifted her wings, examining her, saying, "It is Good and Wonder."  and the Angels held her hands, singing, escorting her, leading her out of the Gates and had flown beside her until she had reached her destination. 

Time heals all wounds, they say. And she has had a copious amount of it here. There is still pain. There is still heartache but there has been infinite hours of reflection and prayer. Of observing the world, her life, what she has wrought, what she can be, the errors of humanity and the triumphs too, at the knee of the King she grew peace within her, wisdom besides. 

A gift, to carry her through this next leg, of her very unusual course. 

Orion stirs because of the chorus that comes before her, leading her and guiding her to his side they set the flower in her hands----the mystical bloom, cultivated by healing tears, admission of wrongs and love---the garden that had burst into life from her bitter vines when Crane had unburdened his heart---has been refilling everyday. He does not know why the Angels are so happy, until he turns to look at her.

There is one singular fine strand of silver, and one of gold in her hair. Her eyes are deep warm, beautiful comfort. Her skin glows, radiant. And he cannot stop himself, he reaches up with much effort to touch her cheek. She leans her face into his palm.

"You burned." he says.  She nods silently, eyes still closed. "You must not do that so often you will make yourself old," he cajoles, and her mouth quirks into a smile. "For whom did you burn, Abigail?" 

Her eyes open. 

They have not been calling her Abigail or Abbie here. Always affectionately, Phoenix. 

"Tell me you did not burn for them again, that you did not sacrifice." he begs. A tear, a golden one, slips down her cheek. He stares at it. He has never seen the like before, she is still changing, still evolving.  "Abigail?"

"I burned to heal my grief and theirs." she says solemnly. "I burned....to release her. To free myself of the venomous pain."

"But still you hurt."

"It is part of the condition." she says. "Hurt, and love. You must know one to know the other. To understand when you have something precious and unique. Why didn't you tell me it was Crane who hurt you"

"I did not want to hurt you further. I had seen what your pain could cause."

"Oh Orion," she smiles gently, turning her face to kiss his palm and then each finger tip. He shivers. She watches his face, before leaning in and pressing her lips to his cheek and hears his breath catch. 

"Abigail."

She withdraws and reaches for the flower, pouring it over him and he sighs as she tends to his wings. It is when she rises from his side that he can see the whole of her, properly. He gasps. She looks at him, and then down at herself, and smiles. 

"Yes, well," she giggles. 

"You are still---"

"They take after me, I guess." she says, wrapping her arms protectively around her burgeoning belly. "Burn and Return." 

"Such a---"

"If you say 'wonder' I swear" she scolds. "I will stay here awhile." she announces. "The world, is unsettled. I don't want to take any risks."

"Your husband....."

She shakes her head. They tell her the world is still, but what will that mean should she go back? Is he still there, broken in that house? Has Jenny repaired and healed? 

The disappointment and pain kindled anew that she may find back on the earth, the threat is too great to endanger her child.Their child.  "They are part yours," Abbie says at last and Orion chokes.

She laughs. "All my time here, they say children are a product of environment, even before she was conceived. There is part of the Earth, of Crane in her, but part of the Sky, of you here too. You did not make me," she continues sternly, "But you....you helped to nurture what I've become. Embrace my nature fully."

"She?" Orion rasps, struggling to rise. 

"In between, like me." A creature that can transcend time, beholden to no boundaries but their own, exceeding all expectations and natural order, of Earth and Sky and the mantle of wisdom and immortality. Belonging to no one. Singular and free. Or she was once. Now there will be two. Had Abbie not been spending so much time in Orion's dwelling, in the Heavens, among Angels and the sky while she had been trying with her husband, had she not been strengthening her wings, growing into and cherishing her new form and all that comes with it, the child might not have been so inclined to be like its mother. She would have been Earthbound, and when Abbie had burned, new young and barely formed, she'd have gone up in flames.

But a phoenix is a phoenix is a phoenix and they will rise rise rise no matter what. You can't hold a phoenix down. Even unborn. "I will stay here, with you Orion. For a bit. For some time."

"Abigail," his voice is heavy and he is still so fragile. She turns to him, kneeling again and lifts his hand, pressing his fingers to her womb. "I will go back, as I must, it is part of my cycle. What I am. But I just want to see her....here, safe, first. Besides whatever state I find the world in when I return, if I find Crane again---" her voice chokes off because she direly  _needs_ to find Crane again. "Well," she laughs, crying more golden tears--a strange affect of immortal motherhood. She's overflowing with divine spectacular essences. "Well Crane can't teach her to fly." 

"I cannot, Abigail," he begins to withdraw. "I cannot,"

"I can love you." 

He stares at her, resplendent and impossible. She must have made a mistake.  "I can and will." 

"Abigail,"

"I'm beginning to worry that's the only word you know."

"I....I am not....him, you will....."

"I will always be dual, now. A Heart of the sky and one of the Earth. A Love for Crane and one for You."

He shakes his head in disbelief. "I cannot, I I am....Angel's do not...."

"You will think me obscene." she whispers, drawing nearer to him. "But you must trust me Orion, there is nothing greater in this world than love. And if you are capable of giving it, you must. In whatever form you have it. _Your brethren love, Orion_ , but they do not love as you wish to." she ghosts her lips across his and feels him tremble. "Love is what makes us greater." she whispers. "Love is what transforms us. Love is what heals us. I do not understand what hurt you, to turn from home. But Love will bring you back. Love will make you whole." 

And she kisses him at last, and he weeps. 

* * *

Time has passed.

He is freewheeling and making a racket in the sky. His wings healed. Stronger, brighter, softer and faster, than ever before. The Angels come to watch him, smiling and clapping at his exuberance. They take joy in his joy.  He has been shouting and exulting for what seconds or eternity, who can know. 

Abbie is resting, soon, very soon there will be a birth in the Heavens and the skies hum with anticipation. 

The Earth is still in suspension. She still fears a return. 

But Love has transformed Orion. Makes him smile and makes him quick. Makes him sing with his Holy Kin. The Blessed tongue does not scratch his throat as before. Soon he suspects, he will go back home, and will no longer be able to breach the realms as freely as he once did. 

So when he somersaults he dives down through the clouds down to the New Time she once more left behind. And all the streets are quiet, and everything is peaceful, but within that house still is the horrible scene. 

He takes in the form of the man who nearly destroyed him and is astonished to feel nothing but pity, remorse. He lays a land over the wound in his chest, around the heart. 

All the world had stood by and watched Abbie recreate her being. To spurn the man who had failed her. 

Now he will give her a gift. There are still some of her feathers clutched in Crane's hands. Some sparks, frozen in the air. He plucks them, one by one, and tucks them into the cavern within him. And her feathers besides he wedges into the heart. They are hers, and they will call to her. 

With his blade he takes great care and slits the soles of Cranes feet, and in them he sets stones, dirt and twig. Things of the Earth. Things that bind him to the world of the living. 

Her sister, paused in mid breath, melding grief from a lover and Happiness, he begs with the Lord, for one more Returning. A mortal and nothing more, he promises, just as she is. He goes back to the blooming house, and bundling vines in his arms goes between the layers. So that both the old and new meld, growing together, blooming and blossoming. Layers knit. Unify. One. 

He had told the man by grave and grave alone and it had been true. 

For the grave had made him repent, and admit. Rising from that grave had brought him here, to be slain. 

The grave had brought him here and had made Abbie open her heart.  

To heal  _Him_ The Angel Orion. 

And so Orion has come back to help the woman he loves. 

Where there is love there is possibility and wonder and hope. And once something is done of love, there can be no regret or pain in it. 

Love is pure. 

* * *

When he returns he gathers Abbie in his arms, kissing her awake. So much joy and freedom in his heart from loving this woman that is Everything. 

He had thought he would have to give up his essence to hold her. 

But Love strengthens and fortifies, it does not break down. 

She thinks that he has not still caught her crying, sitting on the edge, peering into the stagnant unknown. That he has not heard her wrestling with the stone in her heart, that chips away daily, reminding her of the great love she lost, that she'd had to leave behind in order to extinguish the dangerous grief of Jenny. 

"Orion," she strokes his face tenderly and he smiles at her. He is so much changed from the Angel she knew once before. She would never had thought him capable of smiling and now he does it all the time. Laughs, too. 

"Abigail," he murmurs warmly, pressing another kiss to her cheek and helping her to her feet. "I have something for you," just then her knees buckle. "Abigail?"

"The baby." she huffs. "I think it's time! Orion I'm--I'm going to be a mother."

"I shall always watch over your child." he vows, "I shall always watch over you both." He kisses her hand and strokes his thumb across her brow. "Such a wonder." he murmurs as the Angels rush toward her, frantic as they settle her in. 

_"A wonder I never thought I would know"_

His wings shoot through with gold, and he begins to sing. 

 

 

 

 

 


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of the journey folks!   
> Thank you all SO MUCH for going on this VERY different trek with me, I tried al ot of things here I've never done before with imagery and universes and duality and that whole kit and caboodle, but I'm pretty happy with where I ended this and I hope you all are too! <3

She has one Amber eye, and one Blue.

Curly hair, skin like chocolate with a drop of milk.

And her wings, like my own. 

* * *

He taught her, her first wing beats. 

She shook herself out mere days after and had flown beside him.

He taught her, her first steps.

Toddling on stumpy legs into his waiting  long arms and looks up at me adoringly, promising me that he wants to try for another, and soon. 

* * *

 

A warm winged bundle in my arms, blessed by the Father, I had returned, escorted by Orion himself, depositing Me on my doorstep.

"Which version is this," I'd drawled sarcastically.

And had been startled into tears by Ichabod Crane, smiling tearfully at me, drawing me to him, his arms crushing around me and then pulling away to kiss our babies head. "How?"

"His feet are weighted, so that he will always be here when you return. Your feathers and fire in him, that no matter how you Burn, to this life, to this world, to this man, who has learned his lessons now," Orion warns. "You will return. And your sister healed, and new, she will know joy again."  He shakes hands with Crane who is wary and a bit baffled, and then kisses my cheek, and my daughter, and takes for the sky. 

"Crane?"

"Never again." He says. "I will not waste or fail you, ever again Grace Abigail Mills I love you." he goes to his knees and takes her hand in his. He still wears a wedding ring. Hers, what must have fell off while she burned rests in his palm. "All that I am, every ounce, every   _drop_ of me, I love you, through and through, every single feather. And I wronged you. And I will march however many hills slay whatever beasts  but Abbie I will never leave you again,. Never." his eyes glint with fire. This is the man I love. Both parts of him. Determined, stalwart and true. "I will pay penance. But my God Abbie, have me, I beg you, and even if you won't I will still always be yours, do you understand? I see it now Abbie I am yours and I grieve for the pain I caused you. The doubt, the fear, the loneliness, no one should face that my love, no one." he blinks through tears, on hand still clasped in his. "I'll never forgive myself. Never."

"I forgive you." I say. "You will work to keep me everyday but I forgive you Ichabod. I love you."

His eyes close reverently and he murmurs thanks before kissing her hand and looks up at her, holding the ring between his fingers. "Please?"

"Through eternity. You are mine, Ichabod.....and I'm yours." 

He gets to his feet and kisses me, so deeply and for so long, my daughter squeaks her annoyance at being ignored. He springs apart laughing, taking her in his arms and she gurgles happily, tugging his nose. She is so bright already. Wise beyond her years. 

* * *

He has never let me go, since. 

We married again. 

We had some very unconventional, winged guests. Yes, even Orion, came to celebrate. 

It rained after the ceremony, and a man turned up at the house, soaked through, with blue kind eyes and Jenny had shrieked as she ran into his arms. 

"Joe," she screamed, again and again, clutching him, touching his head, his face, his arms, and then kissing him breathless before he could even answer. 

"Damn Mills," he'd laughed "I was only dead for a little while."  

"Shut up." she cried. "Shut up I love you so much, oh God  _Joe_ "

"I know, Jenny." he'd whispered, holding her tight. "I know babe," and then kissing her again. 

I still fly. 

I take her to visit Orion,  my child of earth and sky. 

Until I am too heavy to make the trek. The doctor says twins. 

I have not been flying as much this time around. 

I don't know if they'll be like their older sister. Time will tell.

Jenny and Joe are expecting, too. 

Orion has been welcomed back home.

and I-----

I,

am NeverBefore

a woman who saw her worth and claimed it.

Who was hurt, who was brave, who sacrificed.

Who was angry, vengeful, who burned

Who turned the world upside down.

Who mourned and hardened her heart.

Who Rose.

And loved.

And healed.

And gave love and received more love and became something beyond her own wildest dreams and imaginings. 

I have fire in me. 

Wings for flight.

And a stone that cracked, splinted, obliterated into dust, 

when I saw my daughters face. 

A face that love made. That healing made.

Her name is Eterna. 

Like Eternity, like Eternal, like my love for her, like the duration of our lives.

I have a husband who found his bravery and heart. 

A friend whom I loved and watches over us.

But I have her, 

this precious, beautiful, perfect, New girl. 

And no matter how many times her or I burn. 

No matter where we go, we will always have each other. 

My love for her knows no bounds. 

She is Everything. 

All I have seen and endured, it's worth is ten fold, because I have her. 

This life,

of beauty,

and healing,

of

Love.

is

 

**_Mine_ **

 

_Fin_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading this incredible journey! <3 you all!


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